Majority View Antifa as Unfavorable; Plurality Find Black Lives Matter Favorable: Poll

Majority View Antifa as Unfavorable; Plurality Find Black Lives Matter Favorable: Poll
Antifa members prepare to clash with Patriot Prayer protesters during a rally in Portland, Ore., on Aug. 4, 2018. (John Rudoff/AP Photo)
Zachary Stieber
9/19/2020
Updated:
9/21/2020

A majority of Rust Belt voters see the far-left Antifa network as unfavorable, while a narrow plurality support Black Lives Matter, according to a new Big Data/Epoch Times poll.

Asked how they view Antifa, an anarcho-communist network of groups that has been involved in rioting across the country in recent months, 51.9 percent of likely voters said unfavorably.

Just 12.6 percent said they view Antifa favorably, a lower percentage than the 16.8 percent who have never heard of the network.

The remaining percentage said they had no opinion.

More than 34 percent of respondents aged 18 to 29 view Antifa as favorable, while a majority of those older than 45 viewed it unfavorable.

A nationwide survey from Big Data/Epoch Times last month found a majority of respondents viewed Antifa unfavorably while just 10 percent had a favorable view.

Approximately 44.5 percent of likely Rust Belt voters in the new survey said they view Black Lives Matter favorably, compared to 40.1 percent who said they view it unfavorably.

A man holds a Black Lives Matter sign as a police car burns in front of him during a protest outside CNN Center in Atlanta on May 29, 2020. (Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images)
A man holds a Black Lives Matter sign as a police car burns in front of him during a protest outside CNN Center in Atlanta on May 29, 2020. (Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images)

Just 2 percent had never heard of the movement, while the rest had no opinion.

A majority of respondents aged 18 to 29 view Black Lives Matter favorably, as do a plurality of voters aged 29 to 45. Pluralities of the two groups 45 or older view it as unfavorable.

Black Lives Matter is a movement seeking to upend the political and cultural systems in the United States and anywhere else activists believe racism is pervasive. The movement has hundreds of groups around the world, including a select core that’s part of the official Black Lives Matter Global Network. The network was founded by three people. One described herself and another as “trained Marxists.” Marxism is a far-left philosophy that advocates for socialism leading to communism.

Hundreds of Black Lives Matter protests have turned violent in America alone since May, and a number of activists have been arrested after participating in riots that inflicted damage on cities and towns.

The national poll found that about 42 percent of likely voters viewed the movement as favorable; 41 percent as unfavorable.

Rust Belt voters overwhelmingly see the Chinese Communist Party as unfavorable, with 69.9 percent holding that view versus just 9.3 percent who answered the opposite.

Another 8 percent said they'd never heard of the party, which rules China, while the rest said they had no opinion.

The Epoch Times Rust Belt Poll was conducted by Big Data Poll from Sept. 11 to Sept. 15, 2020, interviewing 2,191 registered voters and 1,440 likely voters in the Midwest via online panel targeting Iowa (7 percent), Michigan (20 percent), Minnesota (12 percent), Ohio (23 percent), Pennsylvania (26 percent), and Wisconsin (12 percent). The sampling error is ± 2.1 percent for registered voters and ± 2.6 percent for likely voters at a 95 percent confidence interval. For more information on the methodology and survey design, please refer to the AAPOR Transparency Initiative Checklist. For an overview of survey results click here.