2 February 2012

Public Say Time for Occupy Protesters to Pack up Their Tents

The vast majority of New Zealanders (75%) think the ‘Occupy’ protesters have made their point and it is time to pack up their tents.

This finding is from UMR Research’s latest nationwide survey1 of a representative sample of 750 people aged 18 years and over. It has a margin of error of + 3.6%. The survey also asked New Zealanders how closely they had followed news stories about the protest, their level of support or opposition to it and how much they understood what the protest was about.

1 Fieldwork was conducted by telephone between 27-30 January 2012.

Given a choice between whether the protesters should be able to carry on with their occupation or whether they had made their point and it was time to pack up the tents, 16% said they should stay and 75% said pack the tents up with 9% not sure enough to express an opinion.

Public support for the protesters was low with only 16% saying they supported them and 51% opposed. A further 25% rated themselves as neither in support nor opposed and 8% were not sure enough to express an opinion.

Protesters failed to capture strong public interest and understanding in their cause. Asked to rate their understanding on a 1-5 scale where 1 meant ‘understand a lot’ and 5 ‘do not understand at all’, only 30% said they understood (1+2 rating) and 37% did not understand (4+5 rating). A further 30% gave a mid-rating of 3 and 3% were unsure.

Public interest in media stories about the protests over the last month was reasonably low too. Just under one-third (31%) said they had followed media stories about the protests closely.

© Scoop Media