Public protests are an essential feature of democracy – or an occupational hazard, depending on your perspective. There is evidence that they have become more common over the last two decades and we are now living in a period of major upheaval, similar to the 1960s. But do they change anything? When people get out in the streets and blast airhorns and hold up placards, does public opinion shift in the protesters’ favour?
That’s what two economists sought to find out. Amory Gethin and Vincent Pons analysed data covering 110,000 protests in the U.S. since 2017. These data were taken from the crowd counting consortium – a volunteer project that collates publicly available figures on the size of political crowds. Of course, most protests are small, attracting only a few hundred participants. But some are much larger, with crowds in the tens or hundreds of thousands.
Interestingly, a single issue – racism – accounted for 27% of all protests. And in fact, 84% of protests were for ‘liberal’ or Left-wing causes, while only 14% were for conservative or Right-wing causes. This huge disparity is presumably due in part to factors like conservatives being older and more likely to live in rural areas.
To assess the political impact of protests, the authors analysed data from Twitter, Google and several nationwide surveys. The surveys included questions on things like vote intention, presidential approval and the most important issue facing the country – allowing Gethin and Pons to see whether protests are associated with shifts in public opinion.
The authors began by comparing tweets, Google searches and measures of public opinion before and after the start of each protest movement. They then used a ‘difference-in-difference’ approach – comparing the change in tweets, Google searches and measures of public opinion in counties that saw more versus less protest activity. What did they find?
In short, the only movement that had a discernible political impact was Black Lives Matter. All the others led to spikes in tweets and Google searches but left no real mark on public opinion. This can be seen in the chart below, which shows results for vote intention (Trump versus someone else) and presidential approval. Only the George Floyd protests are reliably associated with shifts in public opinion.
It seems that if the goal is to affect some kind of political change, most public protests are a waste of time. And note: the argument that “if we don’t protest then only the other side’s message will get heard” doesn’t work. As mentioned, 84% of protests were for ‘liberal’ or Left-wing causes; one side is doing almost all the protesting.
Of course, individual protesters might have other goals like achieving a sense of belonging or taking part in a collective ritual – and for them, attending protests would not be a waste of time.
Gethin and Pons’s findings indicate that, with one notable exception, even large protests have surprisingly little impact on public opinion. Rather than attending protests, budding activists might be better off writing to their political representative or trying to win round friends and family.
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Public protests aren’t a waste of time for media selling advertising. Alright, they often distract their resources from elsewhere – although that is a political tactic in it’s own right.
I suspect it depends on the amount of MSM coverage they get.
BLM and Just Stop Oil protests in the UK got maximum coverage by the MSM …. which was therefore “pushing” the message.
The anti-lockdown protests got little or no coverage. Most people, who get their “news” from the MSM didn’t even know they were taking place.
Nearly a million of us on 2 marches in April / May ’21. 10 km long line of us. Fake news said we were a few thousand anti’s and fascists harassing shoppers.
Protests do work – millions saw us march through London and though 80% are brain dead the message was given. We would not be enslaved to the fake scamdemic medical nazism cult.
Th disparity between the amount of protests by left thinking people and right thinking people is to be expected as leftist types think government should run our lives for us whereas right thinking people tend to think people are better looking after their own affairs and prefer limited government. The left clamour to be saved by government without realising how much power over them this gives government who are usually happy to oblige. ——Or as someone once pointed out “The urge to save humanity is almost always a false face for the urge to rule it”
Right thinking people are too busy working 🙂
I would say the bigger factor is that the very essence of “left wing” ideology is telling others how they must live their lives. Their projects are all collectivist projects. They confect a vision of the world they like, which typically involves everyone has to behave in the particular way they want.
“Right wing” ideology tends to be more individualist, based on self responsibility, charity starts at home, sort of thing. When conservatives go out to protest, it’s almost always to ask to be left alone, or to defend an individual right, not to tell others what they have to do.
From my superficial skimming of the original paper it would seem that they are using gross, or cumulative, measures of public opinion up to a point in time.
What would be more interesting and IMHO useful would be the longer term effect. Many protest have a transient effect on opinion which in many cases will decline over time.
The transient nature of social media coupled with the short attention span of many of its consumers means that each popular movement tends to be eclipsed by the next. BLM has now been largely eclipsed by pro-Palestine sentiment in terms of protest size and media coverage.
Ultimately these specific issues get subsumed into broader topics, so BLM and Floyd are just incidents that strengthen anti-white protest and the pro-Palestine demonstrations appear to have hardened anti-Semitic sentiment.
In both of these cases I see no movement to change the law of this country or any other as a specific consequence of the demonstrations.
At the end of the day they are simply forms of bullying and attempted intimidation and will ultimately fail to have any long lasting impact on the mainstream.
What’s happening in U.S campuses started off as ”protests” but has definitely escalated somewhat. The police need to just get stuck in with tear gas, rubber bullets, whatever it takes. But this is where years of funding from Qatar gets you, I suppose. God knows what changes will be made after the lunatics have been cleared from these particular mental institutions, what with Biden being in charge over there;
”Joe Biden’s Islamized America…
Violent Hamas supporters have seized control of U.S. college campuses.
At the University in Richmond, Virginia, police are overpowered by the domestic terrorists on the Monroe campus. The radicals are throwing glass bottles, rocks, and other projectiles at officers.
Biden’s administration has surrendered with hopes these terrorists will vote for him in November.
All across America, ‘elite’ universities are receiving millions of dollars from Islamic regimes and communist countries that seek to overthrow the U.S. government.
Their years of pouring money into radicalizing and influencing U.S. students have paid off, and everything is going according to plan.”
https://twitter.com/AmyMek/status/1785213851652501706
”‘We are Hamas,’ ‘Long live Hamas’: Joe Biden’s America…
Pro-Hamas “students” have stormed Hamilton Hall at Columbia University in New York. They even took a hostage.
These Hamas foot soldiers have barricaded the doors at Columbia from the inside and are not allowing outsiders in. They are also covering the windows with newspapers so no one can see inside and hanging Hamas propaganda from the windows.”
https://twitter.com/AmyMek/status/1785205609035596113
So refreshing to hear a voice of reason from an actual Gazan person ( 5mins );
Palestinian man from Gaza speaks out AGAINST campus protests.
“I noticed that among these protesters there was slogans and chants for antisemitism. I noticed also some protesters, instead of condemning and asking Hamas to surrender they started glorifying it as a so called resistance movement- which is completely wrong.”
Hamza Howidy was born in Gaza City and lived there until 2023 before he was granted asylum in Germany.”
https://twitter.com/OliLondonTV/status/1785043421851251159
Years of funding from Qatar that the Israeli leadership insisted on maintaining.
Thousands have been protesting in Tel Aviv against said leadership for a hostage deal with Hamas. Police got stuck-in.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/5-arrested-claims-of-police-violence-as-thousands-in-tel-aviv-demand-deal-with-hamas/
They give governments excuses for greater restrictions on protesting.
Possibly, but it’s worth risking (see my comment just now).
A friend remarked to me on one of the anti-lockdown marches that the Government was actually well aware of the scale of the marches, they just pretended on television that they weren’t.
But he reckoned that, even so, it made Parliament (such as it was) think twice about extending the lockdowns, bringing in vaccine passports, etc, because it would have got harder and harder in public to conceal that a lot of people simply weren’t complying. You can’t tell baffled shoppers at the side of a packed out Oxford Street, or coppers whose Black Maria has been caked in White Rose stickers, that it’s “a few hundred anti-vaxxers.”
Protests do work but maybe not in the way the author thinks. During the anti-lockdown protests, not only was I encouraged by being amongst such a happy, positive crowd, but in turn we encouraged loads of taxi/bus/vehicle drivers as well as ordinary pedestrians, many of whom might have thought they were alone otherwise. I had many really great conversations with random pedestrians I met along the way, some of whom literally hadn’t realised the numbers on their side. And the powers that be do see, even if they do nothing and report inaccurately or not at all!
PS to my comment below. I’ve almost (but not quite) given up writing to our MP as she simply responds in a generic, bland, arrogant (assuming I am a total ignoramus), trite (what other adjectives can I think up?!) way. I always try and enlighten friends, family and literally anyone I meet (and I could probably win the record for starting chats with almost anyone!). Though, thankfully, our offspring and my sister are totally on board!