Occupy Protesters Down on Obama, Survey Finds

By MARJORIE CONNELLY
NYT

Zuccotti Park in New York’s financial district is decked out with posters and signs for the wide array of political viewpoints of the Occupy Wall Street protesters. The six-week-old movement has several Web sites to promote various perspectives. But just who are these protesters? What is their political ideology? Do they have jobs?

Costas Panagopoulos, a professor of political science at Fordham University, recently conducted a survey of the Occupy Wall Street protesters in New York.

Dr. Panagopoulos described the protesters as “disgruntled Democrats.” Sixty percent of those surveyed said they voted for Barack Obama in 2008, and about three-quarters now disapprove of Mr. Obama’s performance as president. A quarter said they were Democrats, but 39 percent said they did not identify with any political party. Eleven percent identified as Socialists, another 11 percent said they were members of the Green Party, 2 percent were Republicans and 12 percent say they identified as something else.

Questionnaires handed out by Dr. Panagopoulos’s team of 15 interviewers throughout the park were completed by 301 adults from Oct. 14 to Oct. 18. “I followed the academic protocols that colleagues of mine adopted in the past to survey demonstrations,” he said.

(More here.)