Some interesting survey results from Pew Research:
> 40% of recent protesters are White; only 17% of are Black; Hispanics outnumber Blacks.
> 80% are under 50; of that group, the majority are under 30.
> Roughly 80% are Democrats.
Source: Pew
Digging a little deeper into the numbers…
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Also from Pew Research…
> About 2/3s of all Americans strongly (38%) or somewhat (29%) support BLM
> 71% of Blacks strongly support BLM; 31% of Whites strongly support
> 62% of Dems strongly support BLM; only 10% of GOP strongly support.
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> About 70% of all Americans think the protests were a reaction to George Floyd’s murder or underlying tensions with the police
> 59% think that “some people are taking advantage of the protests to engage in criminal behavior”
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> Only 19% of all Americans regard the protests as an effective remedy for underlying problems.
> Only 1/3 of Blacks regard the protests as an effective remedy for underlying problems.
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Regarding the the effectiveness of the protests …
Omar Wasow is a professor of politics at Princeton who studies protest movements and their effectiveness in changing opinions and policies.
Wasow recently published the results of a 15-year historical research project on the political consequences of protests.
Based on his research, Wasow’s fundamental observation regarding the recent protests:
When protests are accompanied by violence, there is an unfortunate side effect:
Instead of talking, for example, about the history of police killings, people start talking about neighborhood stores going up in flames and the focus tends to shift from a justice frame to a crime frame.
Said differently, when protests are accompanied by violence, the violence ends up undermining the interests of the protest movement.
Think about that conclusion whenever you hear the phrase “mostly peaceful demonstrations”.
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