The numbers on Occupy Wall Street haven’t moved much since their debut. Neither is familiarity breeding contempt nor is the country warming to their cries.
Rasmussen Reports, October 5: “Thirty-three percent (33%) have a favorable opinion, 27% hold an unfavorable view, and a plurality of 40% have no opinion one way or the other.”
On October 13, Time found that 80 percent of respondents had heard of the protests, and that of those respondents, 37 percent tend to support the movement, and 18 percent tend to oppose.
On October 18, Gallup found 22 percent approving the movement’s goals, 15 percent disapproving, and 63 percent not knowing enough to say.
And now, today, CNN:
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.
Sure, it’s different pollsters with different methods and sample sizes, but the results are surprisingly consistent in their proportions. In all of these, the Occupy Wall Street crowd can console themselves with slightly more folks liking them or supporting them than opposing them. But after three weeks of pretty intense media coverage, a significant number of Americans have no opinion on the movement or its goals. In the CNN poll, 26 percent volunteered that they had never heard of it and another 13 percent said they had heard of them and simply didn’t have an opinion of them.
UPDATE: Throw another one on the pile, this one from Pew Research Center for the People & the Press and the Washington Post, conducted October 20–23 among 1,009 adults:
About four-in-ten Americans say they support the Occupy Wall Street movement (39%), while nearly as many (35%) say they oppose the movement launched last month in New York’s financial district.