The "Occupy Wall Street" signs in New York’s Zuccotti Park may be catchy, but they tell little about the nitty-gritty of the rank and file. Now, six weeks into what is becoming a global movement, pollsters and online data sources have begun to answer some basic questions about participants: What are their political beliefs and who is supporting them? “We have had a lot of speculation about who these people are,” says Costas Panagopoulos, a professor of political science at Fordham University in New York whose team of 15 researchers surveyed some 300 New York City protesters between Oct. 14 and 18.
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The average age of the demonstrators, meanwhile, was higher than expected, notes Panagopoulos. “We thought it would be mostly people in their 20s,” he says, but the average age is 33. “That means for every college student you have a mid-career professional in their 40s,” he adds.
Another somewhat surprising aspect of the movement regards its financing. According to the online pay site http://wepay.com, its donation numbers show that the overwhelming online support comes from “average, middle-class donors,” says http://wepay.com chief executive officer Bill Clerico.
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However, attempts to pin the demonstrators down may miss the point, says Villanova University Prof. Matthew Kerbel.
“It’s important to remember that OWS is offering an economic critique that doesn’t fit neatly into the red/blue boxes we’re used to using to describe our political debate,” he says. “Their focus on economic inequality indicts both parties for being unduly influenced by the top 1 percent.”
Indeed, adds Brooklyn Law School Prof. Jonathan Askin, quantitative data on the movement may be interesting, but it misses the larger point of the group action.
“The ‘real political opinions’ of the Wall Street Occupiers are largely irrelevant to a consideration of the role that the Occupy Wall Street movement will play in the 2012 elections,” he says via e-mail, adding that Occupy Wall Street is a transformation in the process of civic engagement and political participation.
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