Liberals are touting a new Time magazine poll purporting to show that twice as many people have a favorable view of Occupy Wall St. than the Tea Party. “Americans favor Occupy Wall Street far more than Tea Party,” the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent beamed in a headline. To Sargent’s credit, he acknowledged that the Tea Party has been around far longer, which clearly affects the results. But the problem with the poll goes far beyond that. Just take a closer look at how the questions were worded.
First, here’s the question on Occupy Wall St.:
This states the views of the Occupy Wall St. crowd in as sympathetic a way as possible — even most conservatives and libertarians opposed the Wall St. bailout and the type of crony capitalism that comes with mixing money and politics. This is not the controversial aspect of Occupy Wall Street.
Yet here’s how the Tea Party question is phrased:
So, while the “Occupy Wall Street” question is phrased in a sympathetic manner, the Tea Party question just mentions the name “Tea Party,” which has been associated with partisan fighting for over two years now. Had pollsters approached the Tea Party question in the same way as the Occupy Wall Street one, they may have written something such as: “Do you support the movement that opposes the Wall Street bailouts, thinks Washington has gotten too big and powerful, and wants to lawmakers to respect America’s founding Constitutional principles?” That clearly would have made respondents view the Tea Party more favorably.
Given the biased way the questions were phrased in the Time poll, it’s no surprise that 54 percent viewed Occupy Wall Street favorably, compared with just 27 percent who said they viewed the Tea Party favorably.
A survey by the Democratic firm Public Policy Polling asked much more straight forward questions, and the numbers were much closer. “Do you support or oppose the goals of the Occupy Wall Street movement?” PPP asked, and 35 percent indicated support, while 36 percent said they opposed the goals. Asked the same of the Tea Party movement, 39 percent supported it compared to 45 percent who opposed it. On a head-to-head question, “Do you have a higher opinion of the Occupy Wall Street movement or the Tea Party movement?” 40 percent chose Occupy Wall Street compared with 37 percent who chose the Tea Party. I’d predict as more people get to know the Occupy Wall Street movement, it will become less popular. But either way, it simply isn’t fair to say that it’s currently twice as popular as the Tea Party.
