Pollster Doug Schoen made waves this morning with a
Wall Street Journal editorial
blasting Occupy Wall Street as "dangerously out of touch with the broad mass of the American people." The editorial was based on a poll with a highly questionable methodology of face-to-face interviewers with less than 200 protesters at the Zuccotti Park encampment. It included passages like this:
Our research shows clearly that the movement doesn't represent unemployed America and is not ideologically diverse. Rather, it comprises an unrepresentative segment of the electorate that believes in radical redistribution of wealth...
It turns out that this was a remarkable display of mendacity from a pollster who counts both Citibank and Mike Bloomberg as former clients. Azi Paybarah of Capital New York obtained the results of Schoen's poll. It turns out that only four percent of the protesters who were interviewed cited a "radical redistribution of wealth" as their hope for what the movement will achieve:
Q: What would you like to see the Occupy Wall Street movement achieve? {Open Ended}
35% Influence the Democratic Party the way the Tea Party has influenced the GOP
4% Radical redistribution of wealth
5% Overhaul of tax system: replace income tax with flat tax
7% Direct Democracy
9% Engage & mobilize Progressives
9% Promote a national conversation
11% Break the two-party duopoly
4% Dissolution of our representative democracy/capitalist system
4% Single payer health care
4% Pull out of Afghanistan immediately
8% Not sure
Think Progress piles on:
Similarly, while Schoen writes that a “large majority” express “opposition to free-market capitalism,” when asked what frustrates them most about the U.S. political process, only 3 percent named “our democratic/capitalist system.” Out of 198 respondents, that amounts to five or six people, which is quite the opposite of a large majority.
We shouldn't dwell too much on the actual findings of the poll, both since it focuses on a single Occupy Wall Street encampment and because it is difficult to image how roughly 200 interviews at a single encampment can actually be scientifically random. The story here is Schoen dishonestly reporting his own results in the Wall Street Journal in order to cast those protesting Wall Street in an unfavorable light.