Registered voters view the tea party both slightly more favorably and slightly more unfavorably than Occupy Wall Street, according to a new poll set to be released Tuesday.
The Resurgent Republic poll, which has been obtained in full exclusively by The Daily Caller, shows that 37 percent of registered voters view the tea party movement favorably while 48 percent view it unfavorably. In contrast, 34 percent view the Occupy Wall Street movement favorably while 42 percent view it unfavorably.
A greater number of respondents said they either had no opinion or had never heard of the Occupy Wall Street movement than the tea party movement.
Forty-one percent of independents said they had a favorable opinion the tea party, while 45 percent said the they had an unfavorable opinion. Thirty-two percent of independents said they view Occupy Wall Street favorably, while 43 percent said they viewed it unfavorably.
Unsurprisingly, Democrats registered a generally favorable opinion of Occupy Wall Street and a negative opinion of the tea party while Republicans shared the opposite view.
When given the option to choose whether Occupy Wall Street was a positive force — defined as “rightly pointing out the excesses of big banks and Wall Street” while “jeopardizing the financial security of ordinary Americans — or a negative force — defined as being composed of “left-wing activists who think capitalism is bad” and who would prefer an economic system that “redistributes income instead of a free market economy” — the former won out. Forty-seven percent said it was a positive force, 37 percent defined it as a negative force, and 16 percent didn’t know or had no opinion.
Most crucially, 49 percent of independents defined it as a positive force compared to 36 percent who said it was a negative force.
The poll surveyed 1,000 registered voters from October 30 to November 2 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points. Resurgent Republic is a 501(c)(4) organization which, according to its website, “promote[s] conservative free market principles such as lower taxes and economic growth, and support strong national defense policies.”