"Addicting Info.com" - Rasmussen Releases Occupy Wall Street Poll
October 11, 2011 Addicting Info.com October 9, 2011
http://www.addictinginfo.org/2011/10/09/rasmussen-releases-occupy-wall-street-poll/
The right-leaning Rasmussen Reports returns from the field with what I think is the first poll about Occupy Wall Street.
The buried lead: At the moment, the protesters who’ve been mocked on CNN and Fox News, accused of class warfare by Mitt Romney, and handled delicately by the White House, have… decent favorable ratings.
Americans are divided on the protestors themselves.
Thirty-three percent (33%) have a favorable opinion, (and a plurality of)
Twenty-seven percent (27%) hold an unfavorable view,
Forty percent (40%) have no opinion one way or the other,
Fifty percent (50%) of Democrats have a favorable opinion. (while a plurality of )
Forty-three (43%) Republicans say the opposite.
Among those not affiliated with either major party, a solid plurality (45%) have no opinion. Most unaffiliateds are not following the story.
Will that number hold up as the movement gets more coverage? Who knows. It didn’t hold up for the Tea Party. But one way of looking at this is that the Occupy Wall Street movement is more than twice as popular as Congress. Because of that low engagement number, it’s technically more popular than the Tea Party.
In an August Rasmussen poll,
Forty-three percent (43%) of Americans considered “Tea Party” a negative label,
twenty-Nine percent (29%) considered it positive.
The message is more popular:
Seventy-nine percent (79%) of Americans “agree with the statement that the ‘The big banks got bailed out but the middle class got left behind.’” (The way I heard the chant on Friday: “Banks got bailed out, we got sold out.”) This is the context for the steady roll of Democratic endorsements; today, Russ Feingold.
The poll was conducted on Monday and Tuesday, with a sample of 1,000 adults.
The Tea Party. The Tea Party faded, I think for good reason that are easy to comprehend. First, the movement was ginned-up by people who by paradigm were concerned with government spending. One would be naïve if one did not acknowledged that powerful people found the Tea Party a most convenient vehicle for combating the newly elected non-traditional president. It was easy for the Kochs and other ‘uber’ wealthy via the likes of Dick Armey, FreedonWorks., and David Dukes Ku Klux Klan to deliver their anti-Administration messages. (For those who will question my inclusion of David Duke and the KKK, You Tube David Duke and take a listen to one of his most recent videos) If we add a taste of Sarah Palin and Chuck Grassley’s ‘killing Grandma’, it was easy to incite the middle-aged to elderly. That very level of excitement facilitated the Tea Party takeover of he House of Representatives. The efforts to take over the Senate failed because of their whacked-out candidates. In any case, half the mission was accomplished. Once Tea Party politicians took office, those very protesters found out about conservative/GOP subterfuge and effective politicking. The need for the Tea Party outside of government could then ease with no real damage to the Tea Party backers. They got one half of what the money-backers wanted. How long did it take for those Tea party protesters to find out about their party’s focus on dismantling or reducing entitlement programs?
The Occupy Wall Street movement has a vastly different genesis. Rasmussen is correct in wondering how long the movement will survive. OWS will fade with time (weather, interest and the like) but I posit that it will leave a viable and living skeleton that will influence U.S politics. In fact the Occupy Wall Street movement is in part alive due to complete grid-lock and obstructionism in Washington D.C. True bi-partisan cooperation could have led to elimination of many grievances of the eventual OWS.
