Poll: Occupy Wall Street versus Tea Party, Cut Between Partisan Party Lines

Each day that passes, my theory about Occupy Wall Street as a re-election campaign strategy for President Obama has been generating more confirmations.

From Pew Research (bold emphasis mine)

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.

By contrast, more say they oppose the Tea Party movement than support it (44% vs. 32%), according to the latest survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press and The Washington Post, conducted Oct. 20-23 among 1,009 adults. One-in-ten (10%) say they support both, while 14% say they oppose both.

Partisanship plays a strong role in attitudes about the two movements. About six-in-ten Republicans (63%) say they support the Tea Party. That jumps to 77% among Republicans who describe themselves as conservative. Just 13% of Democrats support the Tea Party movement, while 64% are opposed.

About half of Democrats (52%) – and 62% of liberal Democrats – say they support the Occupy Wall Street movement. Among Republicans, 19% say they support the anti-Wall Street protests, while more than half (55%) oppose them.

Independents have mixed opinions of the Occupy Wall Street movement: 43% support the movement and 35% are opposed. By contrast, the balance of opinion among independents toward the Tea Party is much more negative: Just 30% support the Tea Party movement while 49% are opposed.

Pew Research essentially confirms the Gallup survey who also showed earlier that only a segment of the American population has been in favor of Occupy Wall Street.

We must remember that the Tea Party has served as a critical influence in turning the tide to favor Republicans during the 2010 Congressional elections.

In the realization that election season nears and that the approval ratings for both Congress and the President are at record lows, which in essence diminishes the odds of the re-election of the Democrat incumbents, thus the seeming urgency for the beleaguered Democrats (through their allies) to organize, mobilize, finance and expand a populist movement that could neutralize the Tea Party forces.

So the Occupy Wall Street movement basically rests on the political gimmickry of class warfare which advocates the expansion of government control in the delusional belief that the ends will justify the means.

Importantly, the Pew survey above has been exhibiting how Occupy Wall Street and the Tea party movement appear to be galvanizing across partisan party lines, which essentially has been confirming my theory.

So far on this account, the survey suggests that Occupy Wall Street as rather a new movement that rides on fancy noble but unattainable abstract goals has been achieving their objective as a prominent counterbalance to the Tea Party movement.

But this has yet to spillover to President Obama’s approval ratings or to his re-election odds.

The Intrade prediction market says that as of this writing Obama’s re-election odds is at 48.7%.

It is interesting and fascinating to witness how people have been so gullible as to be unwittingly used and manipulated to support political causes whose benefits only accrues to politicians seeking office. This also clearly shows how politics can strip or rob people of their common sense.