[conspire] Public Surveys

[Nick Moffitt]

I find this chart extraordinary:

https://s.crunch.io/widget/index.html#/ds/f6faf2ab835c42758bfeb4a96cd42719/row/6BGixXs7gm5Wt5hqAIdSaZ000024/column/1kUCwrdvCGWJYQj27lfohm000002?viz=horizontalStackedBarPlot&cp=percent&dp=2&grp=stack

Each bar is a quintile for the Likert-scale question on feelings for the police (so the top bar is respondents who are "very favorable" to the police).  This one seems not to have provided a "neither favorable nor unfavorable" option, prompting people to select "don't know".

Each coloured section is a level of support for the protestors right now.  So the leftmost block is "strongly support" the protestors, etc.  This breaks out "neither support nor oppose" and "don't know" into separate categories.

While it is no great surprise that, considered together, "somewhat" or "strong support" for the protestors has a majority among those who have even the slightest doubt about their feelings toward the police, the last category is striking.

There is a plurality of support for the protestors among respondents who expressed "very favorable" feelings toward the police.

These protests appear to have captured the sentiment of the mainstream in a way that the Ferguson events did not.  This is extraordinary.