Survey Says

Occupy Wall Street Protesters More Popular Than Congress: Poll

By David Freedlander 10/05/11 1:21pm

A new poll out today by Rasmussen Reports shows that 33 percent of Americans have a favorable opinion of the protesters now occupying Lower Manhattan as part of a demonstration against what they see as a financial system tilted toward the rich.

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.  Fifty percent (50%) of Democrats have a favorable opinion while a plurality of Republicans (43%) 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.

By comparison, a recent ABC poll show that only 14 percent of Americans have a favorable view of Congress, and 82 percent disapprove. Perhaps this explains why some of our own reps, like Jerry Nadler and Charlie Rangel, have made their way down to Zuccotti Park.

The poll also found that 79% of Americans agree with the protesters primary point,  that the “The big banks got bailed but the middle class got left behind.”  Just 10% disagree with that statement and 11% are not sure.

“Americans continue to overwhelmingly believe that government and big business work together against the rest of us,” said Scott Rasmussen, president of Rasmussen Reports. “For many, the bailouts confirmed their worst fears about this unhealthy alliance.”

However just 20% of Americans believe that more government regulation will do the trick while 60% believe that free market competition would do more to help the middle class.

The national survey of 1,000 Adults was conducted on October 3-4, 2011 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence.

 

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topics: Survey Says
  • Psycheboat

    Makes one wonder what damage the Conservative media and think tanks have done to our citizenry by constantly feeding them that negative bull about free markets and competition and supply and demand and representative government…Yeah sure we are dumber than the generation before us because we have been lulled into a sense of complacency. Go home watch football, shop at the mall and for God’s sake don’t read a book or think about how we all got the shaft, while the top 1% got the gold mine.

  • Anonymous

    Power to the People Power to the people.

    Before there was the “Oracle at Delphi” there was Count Vampire J. Machiavelli

    VJ Machiavelli
    The Legislative Budget is Too Damn High

  • Anonymous

    This group will end up hurting Obama , just like the hippies and communists hurt Lyndon Johnson and Hubert Humphrey

  • Anonymous

    It’s unreal how people like Psycheboat can b@^h about the very system that permits you your quality of life – all that free market capitalism nonsense.  We’ve witnessed the alternatives – and it’s resulted in the most heart wrenching tragedies of our time (try 100 million dead) via purges and full government control in the name of the people and ‘equality’.  Soviet Union, China, Cuba, Venezeula, Cambodia, North Korea – where equality resulted in cannibalism.  A good percentage of millionaires are self-made in this country – isn’t that the kind of society we want?  There are very few who are “permanently rich” and “permanently poor” – people go up and down.  The question is what system has been best for the ordinary citizen.  What system has the most upward mobility? You don’t need a think tank, you just need to pay attention to history.  How did Hong Kong become a 3rd world rock w/no resources into a 1st world? Capitalism/free trade.  How did Venezeula go from a relatively rich nation to a disaster? Socialism.  It’s no contest – and it’s responsible for you sitting on your a@$ typing now as opposed to starving as you wonder why the government took your house in the name of “equality”. 

  • Rolando Prieto

    The reason we have our standard of living is because of exploitation. Do you remember slavery or chinese migrant workers? How about the fact that most everything we consume here is made by chinese people in sweat shops? Or taking advantage of undocumented mexicans? Or how about installing puppet governments that let american companies rape their people and their land?

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_BRYVECRU5T422EOOBM62PLSIME Vietvet68

    Nonsense it was the Vietnam War that hurt LBJ, not the protesters. 

  • Spotlight

    You are a shill. You are a 25-year-old PR flack paid by the GOP to spout nonsense on discussion boards. If you believe we have a free market than why didn’t BOA, Merrill Lynch, Wells Fargo and the other Big Banks go bankrupt as your ‘free market’ dictated they should?

  • http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/42THFKXIPMJHQBIH6OPI4RVIDY Thebes

    Just imagine how many would be for the protests without the Corporate Media’s propaganda trivializing and maginalizing them.

    This is what happens after a generation of “the best government money can buy.”

  • http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/42THFKXIPMJHQBIH6OPI4RVIDY Thebes

    We have NO Free Market and NO Capitalism in the USA today.

    Under a bought and paid for Corporatist Congress (approval rating a mere 12%) the richest 1% have their losses socialized while their profits are privitized. This is not a Free Market, it is government power combining with corporate power to further enhance the wealth of the very wealthy.

    Try to start a business in the USA today. Go on, I dare you. You will bash your head into a brick wall of regulations imposed upon you, which pose no burden to your competition because THEY wrote the legislationspecifically to exclude your new competition.

    Our government should be by, of, and for the people. Instead its by, of, and for the Corporations.

  • Smitty

    Still pumping that socialism/communism generally be afraid of all “isms” crap after all this time? It’s not about ism’s, its about rich and poor and the poor are always screwed by the rich. usually it by this definition that the rich get and stay rich. Please leave the building with this crap. The people are awake and don’t go for it anymore.

  • Smitty

    And corporate power mixed with government power, according to Benito Mussolini, is the very definition of Fascism. This is Amerikkka today.

  • Friday

    This is a story about a man/woman named sheeple, who was living in a manufactured world, there was fairness, if you think there is some, look the otherway and hurl…..

  • Quamarzaman

    The rich are inviting socialism in USA, not the poor. The money sucker Government machinery and their supporter in wall st, banks and big business will ensure that china will take over america by their money and cheap man power. Wake up Americans. You can not be naive. Nowhere in this world Government give free money to the big banks and businesses who suck poor people’s money. Get the money from corporate bosses and big business and give to the jobless to start small business. That will solve the problems. If you do not know how to do it, ask China, they will show you how to have billions dollars reserve.

  • Anonymous

    did the protestors vote for a Democrat after hippie-thons ?

  • Anonymous

    “American Epitaph” Damien Darby. An ebook circulating and spreading the message in a new medium.  Large portion of proceeds going to #o-Seattle group. Cheers.

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