Moscow, November 7, Sputnik Press-Office – According to a Sputnik.Polls survey conducted by the polling and research company Ifop and commissioned by Sputnik News Agency and Radio, the majority of people in France (56 percent), Spain (55 percent) and Italy (53 percent), as well as 50 percent of Germans, 47 percent of Polish people, and 36 percent of British people would like to see Hillary Clinton as the next US president. Meanwhile, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are neck-and-neck in the latest election polls. This split in opinion could be the result of the concerted campaign by international media in support of Mrs Clinton, which has been confirmed by at least three influential polls*, according to which “a majority of Americans believe the media is working to elect Hillary Clinton.” (Sputnik) — Sputnik launched the Sputnik.Polls project in January 2015 to conduct polls in Western Europe and the United States in cooperation with the leading research companies Populus, Ifop and Forsa. The project involves regular surveys on high-profile social and political issues.
According to the poll conducted by French opinion and marketing research company Ifop, 56 percent of the French, 55 percent of the Spaniards, 53 percent of the Italians, 50 percent of the Germans, 47 percent of the Poles and 36 percent of the Britons would prefer Hilary Clinton as the next president of the United States.
These numbers, however, could be the result of media supporting Clinton, according to experts and earlier polls.
The survey issued by the Rasmussen Reports on October 18 said that 56 percent of likely US voters agree that mainstream media are trying to influence the public in favor of Clinton. The Suffolk University/USA Today poll released on October 26 showed 82 percent of Donald Trump supporters and 74 percent of Clinton supporters certain that major media were favoring Clinton. The AFP/Gfk poll released on October 27 provided similar results with 51 percent of the likely Clinton voters believing that media were biased in her favor.
Some experts agree that the results of the polls are influenced by the media campaign for or against a candidate.
"Clinton is the candidate of the establishment and the western media support the establishment," Xavier Moreau, an editor of a geopolitics website Stratpol, told Sputnik.
French media concentrated on Trump's faults, which inevitably resulted in the readers forming a negative opinion of him, a French media communications expert Francois-Bernard Huyghe said.
"It is 'anti-trumpism' rather than the protection of Hillary, considering that French media always speak of Trump's gaffes, Trump's sexism, Trump's vulgarity, Trump's aggression. Seeing Trump from the media's perspective, the French developed a strong dislike for him; whether it is justified or not is another question," Huyghe commented on the poll results.
He also told Sputnik that it was surprising that the number of the French hostile toward Trump did not reach 90 percent.
According to Diana Johnstone, an American writer and journalist, who also spoke of the results of the survey in France, only 56 percent of the voters expressing their support for Clinton was unexpected and a proof of the French resisting the propaganda.
Many of the Europeans would not want either candidate to take the presidential office, with 40 percent of the respondents in Germany, 31 percent in Spain, 30 percent in Italy, 26 percent in France and Poland choosing this option. In the United Kingdom, the number of the people skeptical toward both nominees was, at 46 percent, ten percent higher than the number of Clinton supporters.
Only three percent of the Spanish, four percent of the Germans, five percent of the French, six percent of the Poles, eight percent of the Italians and ten percent of the Britons would like to see Trump as the president of the United States.
The poll was conducted on October 22-26 in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Poland and the United Kingdom. The survey involved 6,031 adults and is representative of the countries' gender and age composition.
