Greg Sargent
tracks down crosstabs from two new polls showing that non college-educated whites, a demographic group that has long been a Republican bastion, support Occupy Wall Street:
The new data comes from today’s United Technologies/National Journal Congressional Connection poll, and Time magazine’s poll from late last week, both of which found that majorities back the protesters. I asked both organizations for the breakdown on this question among non-college-educated whites, which is seen by polling experts as a reasonably good category for judging blue collar white sentiment. Both graciously supplied the answers:
* In the National Journal poll, 54 percent of non-college-educated whites agree with the protesters; only 42 percent disagree.
* In the Time poll, 54 percent of non-college-educated men, and 48 percent of non-college educated women, agree with the protesters. (That’s roughly 51 percent overall.) Meanwhile,only 29 percent of non-college-educated men, and only 19 percent of non-college-educated women, disagree. (That’s roughly 23 percent.)
The sample sizes were reasonable, too: In the National Journal poll, 384 non-college-educated respondents were polled; in the Time poll, 379 were surveyed.
Strikingly, President Obama's approval among non-college-educated whites in the Time poll was only 26 percent. This means Occupy Wall Street is resonating well outside of demographic groups that tend to favor Democrats.
While concern trolls like Doug Schoen will twist their own data in order to tell us that anything even vaguely associated with liberals and hippies will turn off large swaths of America, the simple truth is that right now Wall Street is deeply and broadly despised. As such, it shouldn't be surprising that most Americans, no matter their demographic background, view people taking a stand against Wall Street in a favorable light.