Poll: Occupy movement more popular than Tea Party

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With its emphasis on shining light on the real villains of the financial meltdown, the Occupy Movement is more popular than the all-government-is-bad Tea Party.

A TIME poll taken on October 9 and 10, with a base of 1,001 people, has turned up some interesting results about how Americans view the Tea Party, Occupy Wall Street, and dysfunction in Washington. 81% of respondents think the country is on the wrong track, but they’re reluctant to place the blame fully on President Obama for the problems; 50% of the respondents disapprove of the way he’s handling the job, but 59% believe that he cares about them, and half of the respondents say he has the toughness necessary to see this through. On an exceedingly grim note, only 4% of the 1,001 polled feel positive about the state of the country today.

The poll asked people to identify which faction of government best represents their views. 30% identified with Democrats, while 17% said Republicans and 12% went with the Tea Party. So if you’re looking for a left-right bias, it leans slightly to the left (30% left to 29% right), assuming the designations of Democrats to the left; Republicans and Tea Partiers to the right. A whopping 39% of the respondents identified with no party or the always-popular “other” designation.

When asked for their view of the Tea Party, 27% of the respondents went with favorable, while 33% said it was unfavorable. When asked about the Occupy Wall Street movement, 54% looked at it as favorable, while 23% viewed it as unfavorable. In short, twice as many respondents viewed OWS as the favorable movement.

Digging even deeper into the numbers, the Tea Party was more hated (24% “very unfavorable” to OWS’ 13% “very unfavorable”), while OWS was more readily embraced (25% “very favorable” against the Tea Party’s 8% “very favorable”). For Tea Party supporters looking for any kind of silver lining, the group of poll-takers didn’t have much faith in OWS being more than just protests and tent-pitching — 56% said they felt it would have little impact on American politics.