So who is at the protest and why?

Scores of people on social media and in the media have been labelling those at the protest everything from terrorists to neo nazis to white supremacists to a danger to democracy. Apart from a few vox pops, no one has made a serious effort to find out who the majority of people there are, and […]

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Scores of people on social media and in the media have been labelling those at the protest everything from terrorists to neo nazis to white supremacists to a danger to democracy. Apart from a few vox pops, no one has made a serious effort to find out who the majority of people there are, and why they are there.

Up until now. Sean Plunket’s The Platform commissioned Curia Market Research to conduct a scientific survey of the protesters at Parliament. Curia staff spent all day Saturday and Sunday at Parliament asking a few short questions of those present.

The response rate was an unprecedented 95%. Only a handful of people declined to be surveyed. The vast majority were eager that there was finally someone there wanting to know who they were and why they were there.

While I was concerned about health and safety issues, my staff report that they did not encounter any threatening behaviour at all. In fact they say even the Mongrel Mob members there were polite. Maybe 1% of those surveyed made a critical comment of the fact the staffer was masked (and the response was that their employer had asked them to be masked), but that was it.

So what were the findings of this poll of protesters. The full results will be at The Platform. Here are a few findings:

• There were more women than men there.
• 41% of (adult) protesters were aged under 40
• Most protesters were from provincial cities. There were relatively few protesters from towns or rural areas. Around 15% were from Wellington and Christchurch and 17% from Auckland.
• The only ethnic group over-represented were Maori who made up 27% of protesters surveyed compared to 14.8% of the adult population.
• 37% of protesters voted for Labour or Greens and 22% for National or ACT.
• Of the five parties in Parliament the most over-represented are the Maori Party which has three times greater support (at last election) amongst protesters than in the election and the Greens who have twice as much. ACT has 1.6 times as much while National and Labour voters are under-represented.
• Of parties outside Parliament, those most over-represented are Social Credit, Advance NZ, NZ Outdoors, New Conservative and ONE Party. However while over-represented, protesters who voted for those parties only represent fewer than 20% of those sampled.
• 77% of protesters said they were unvaccinated and 21% said they have had at least one shot.
• The vast majority of responses as to why they were there cited the mandate. A word cloud below shows you the most common responses.

I found it interesting that 45% of protesters who voted at the last election actually voted for a party that makes up the Government they are now protesting against.

The post So who is at the protest and why? first appeared on Kiwiblog.