MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Disenchantment with Trump and Hillary makes room for an alternative candidate, shows Reuters/Ipsos poll

Poll shows 21% of likely voters will not back Trump or Clinton in the November presidential election.

A public opinion poll from Ipsos, contracted and publishes by Reuters shows that United States citizens demand for an alternative to the two main presidential candidates has surged since the last election, underscoring the unpopularity of Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton.

 Based on 2,153 interviews, poll results suggest a strong potential for a third-party candidate. The possible alternatives mentioned are Gary Johnson of the Libertarian Party or Jill Stein of the Green Party and even when they could take enough of the vote in the Nov. 8 presidential election to influence its outcome, they are quite unknown to a majority of the electorate.

According to the July 1-8 poll, 21% of likely voters will not back Trump or Clinton. That compares with about 13% of likely voters who opted out of the two main choices at the same point in the 2012 race between incumbent President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney.

The poll also showed a majority of US voters have an overall “unfavorable” view of both main candidates, with 46% of Clinton supporters and 47% of Trump supporters saying their top priority when voting will be to stop the opposing candidate from reaching the White House.

Demand for an alternative could be decisive in hotly contested battleground states. In Florida in 2012, for instance, Obama won by less than one percentage point. If this year's race is just as tight, third-party candidates could draw enough support to flip the state from one major party to the other.

The Reuters/Ipsos poll is conducted online in English with American adults in the continental United States, Alaska and Hawaii. The survey of voters who want an alternative to Trump and Clinton included 2,153 likely voters and has a credibility interval, a measure of accuracy, of 2 percentage points. The five-day average poll that ended July 8 included about 1,240 likely voters and has a credibility interval of 3 percentage points