• Occupy Protests,  Occupy Wall Street,  Polling

    Poll Watch: 32% Have Favorable View of Occupy Wall Street

    Protesters and members of Occupy Wall Street wait for the start of the march, during an annual demonstration calling for a stop to police brutality in New York October 22, 2011

    According to the latest CNN Poll.

    Although most Americans don’t trust Wall Street, that hasn’t translated into full support –or understanding– of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Despite large majorities who think that Wall Street bankers are greedy, overpaid and dishonest, four in ten don’t have an opinion about the weeks-long protests, according to a new CNN/ORC International poll released Monday.

    Among those who have an opinion, the public is split on how they feel about Occupy Wall Street. Thirty-two percent of Americans say they have a favorable view of the movement that has spread from Wall Street to Chicago, and that even cropped up at the most recent CNN presidential debate in Las Vegas. Twenty-nine percent of the nation says they have an unfavorable view of Occupy Wall Street.

    But opinions are clear about Wall Street itself. Eight in ten say Wall Street bankers are greedy, 77% say they’re overpaid, and two-thirds say Wall Street bankers are dishonest, a number that has gone up by a third in roughly two decades.

    Over time, opinions about the financial center of the U.S. have gotten worse. In the 1990s, only 30% of the country said they had no trust at all in Wall Street to do what is best for the economy, 24 percentage points lower than now.

    Pretty much what I would expect. Most Americans are too caught up in their own lives to involve themselves in a protest movement in which there are NO clear goals or objectives.

    Although this “occupation” may last a while, eventually it will just flame out with NO real impact. What will have an impact will be the Presidential race for 2012 which starts in the first week of the New Year with the Iowa GOP Caucuses.

    The entire poll is here (pdf).

  • Occupy Wall Street,  Polling,  Tea Party

    Poll Watch: Who Has More Popular Support – The Tea Party or Occupy Wall Street?

    Tea Party April 15 2009 080

    Ventura County Tea Party Rally, April 2009

    The answer is probably NEITHER.

    That’s tricky. We asked the same “support” or “oppose” question of both in the aforementioned USA Today/Gallup poll. The results show broadly similar views, although the Tea Party, with a 22% supporter, 27% opponent response in this poll, is slightly more negative than the 26% supporter, 19% opponent profile for the OWS movement. Half or more of Americans are neither supporters nor opponents of these movements. That underscores the point made by my colleague Jeff Jones in his analysis — namely that the majority of Americans are not highly caught up in these movements that occupy so much of the news media’s time.

    My friends and colleagues, by and large, could care less. So, this is probably correct.

    Unless, of course, one of the demonstrations disrupts traffic, then that person will hate your group!

  • Barack Obama,  Occupy Wall Street,  President 2012

    President 2012: Obama on Occupy Wall Street Protests – “We Are on Their Side”



    How about being on the American people’s side, Mr President?

    In an interview that will be aired tonight on ABC News, President Obama continues to express his commitment to the Occupy Wall Street protesters.

    “The most important thing we can do right now is those of us in leadership letting people know that we understand their struggles and we are on their side, and that we want to set up a system in which hard work, responsibility, doing what you’re supposed to do, is rewarded,” Obama tells ABC News. “And that people who are irresponsible, who are reckless, who don’t feel a sense of obligation to their communities and their companies and their workers that those folks aren’t rewarded.”

    The president also compares the protesters to the Tea Party. “In some ways, they’re not that different from some of the protests that we saw coming from the Tea Party,” Obama says. “Both on the left and the right, I think people feel separated from their government. They feel that their institutions aren’t looking out for them.”

    But it wasn’t too long ago that President Obama openly mocked the Tea Party movement…..

    President Obama needs to address America’s problems and stop campaigning.

    American voters are not buying his spin which is dividing America for the sole purpose of his re-election.

  • Occupy Protests,  Occupy Wall Street,  Polling

    Poll Watch: 22% Approve of Occupy Wall Street Movement’s Goals


    According to the latest Gallup Poll.

    Less than half of Americans express an opinion about either the Occupy Wall Street movement’s goals or the way it has conducted its protests. Those with an opinion are more likely to approve than disapprove.

    The results are based on an Oct. 15-16 USA Today/Gallup poll. The Occupy Wall Street movement has attracted significant media attention for its nearly month-long protest of major U.S. financial institutions in New York, with similar demonstrations taking place in numerous other cities in the United States in recent weeks.

    But the American public does not seem to be very familiar with the movement or its goals. Part of that may stem from the below-average level of attention Americans are paying to the news story. Fifty-six percent say they are following the story closely, including 18% who say very closely. The averages for more than 200 news events Gallup has tracked since the 1990s are 61% closely and 22% very closely.

    Additionally, the lack of knowledge about the movement’s goals may be because the movement has not had clearly defined leaders or goals. Rather, it appears to be united by grievances against the wealthiest Americans — in particular, those who run major Wall Street financial institutions.

    Republicans (57%), Democrats (57%), and independents (55%) are about equally likely to say they are following news about Occupy Wall Street closely.

    Those who are closely following the news about Occupy Wall Street are more likely to approve than disapprove of the movement’s goals, but even among this more attentive group there is a substantial degree of uncertainty, 44%. That drops to 27% among the most highly attentive group, those who are following the story “very closely.” Among this group, 45% approve and 29% disapprove of the Occupy Wall Street movement’s goals.

    It appears the American public by and large are neutral toward the Occupy Wall Street Movement. And, in contrast to the Tea party movement, the level of public support is about the same.

    The poll sought to contrast support for Occupy Wall Street with another prominent American movement, the Tea Party. In the poll, 22% describe themselves as Tea Party movement supporters, 27% as opponents, and 47% as neither. Gallup has typically found that about equal percentages of Americans are Tea Party supporters or opponents, with the greatest percentage neutral. Thus, the current level of public support for Occupy Wall Street is similar to that for the Tea Party movement.

    So, what are the implications?

    Unclear.

    To the extent the Democratic Party and its member POLS embrace the Occupy Wall Street Movement is unknown. And, how this influences the 2012 elections is also unknown.

    However, the recent polling by the Wall Street Journal which provides some insight into the protesters might indeed exert some future influence on both who as elected representatives support them or how the public perceives them.

    The protesters have a distinct ideology and are bound by a deep commitment to radical left-wing policies. On Oct. 10 and 11, Arielle Alter Confino, a senior researcher at my polling firm, interviewed nearly 200 protesters in New York’s Zuccotti Park. Our findings probably represent the first systematic random sample of Occupy Wall Street opinion.

    Our research shows clearly that the movement doesn’t represent unemployed America and is not ideologically diverse. Rather, it comprises an unrepresentative segment of the electorate that believes in radical redistribution of wealth, civil disobedience and, in some instances, violence. Half (52%) have participated in a political movement before, virtually all (98%) say they would support civil disobedience to achieve their goals, and nearly one-third (31%) would support violence to advance their agenda.

    The vast majority of demonstrators are actually employed, and the proportion of protesters unemployed (15%) is within single digits of the national unemployment rate (9.1%).

  • Occupy Protests,  Occupy Wall Street

    Occupying Wall Street Energy Primarily a “LEFT” Coast Affair

    Nate Silver of the New York Times has this analysis.

    The nascent movement known as Occupy Wall Street had its largest single day of protests on Saturday. And a funny thing happened: most of the action was far from Wall Street itself.

    No, I don’t mean at Zuccotti Park — which is not, technically, on Wall Street. Nor do I mean Times Square — all of 19 minutes away from Wall Street on the ‘C’ train — where large crowds of protesters gathered on Saturday.

    Instead I mean Europe, where crowds in cities like Rome, Barcelona and Madrid were estimated at 200,000 to 500,000 per city (more, probably, than the protests in the United States combined). And I mean California and other parts of the western United States, where crowds were proportionately much larger than in the Northeast or elsewhere in the country.

    Leaving aside Europe, where the Occupy protests merged, not always seamlessly, with those sponsored by left-wing groups, the distribution of protests throughout the United States may reveal something about the political orientation of the protesters.

    Yep, from the West – where there is higher unemployment as well.

    Read it all.

  • Occupy Wall Street,  Rudy Giuliani

    Rudy Giuliani Audio: You Are Not Allowed to Sleep on the New York City Streets

    Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani on the Sean Hannity radio show

    How did I know that Rudy would not tolerate the Occupy Wall Street protesters as much as current Mayor Bloomberg?

    Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani told Sean Hannity on his talk show yesterday that, if he was still mayor, he would have told the “Occupy Wall Street” protesters, “You are not allowed to sleep on the streets.”

    On his show, Hannity asked Giuliani how he would have dealt with the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ movement if he was still mayor of New York City – to which Giuliani replied, “Well I had a rule and I enforced it as best I could and pretty effectively. The rule was: You’re not allowed to sleep on the streets. Sorry, not allowed to sleep on the streets. Streets are not for sleeping.”

    “Sleeping on the streets is a dysfunctional act. It harms the person, it harms society, it leads to unsanitary conditions that affect public health,” added Giuliani. “The first one who decided to sleep there should have been removed and then the second one, and the third one, and the fourth one and the fifth one.”

    “They can protest during the daytime if they want to, but if you want to stay over in New York City overnight, you got to rent a room, and if you’re homeless we got plenty of shelters for you,” said Giuliani

    A No nonsense, yet compassionate POL.

    Listen to it all……

    I cannot think that the appeasement that Mayor Bloomberg is allowing will work out well for the protesters or the New York City workers on Wall Street.