CV NEWS FEED // A Harvard / Harris poll from last week found that the far-left movement Antifa has a 17% favorability rating among American voters.
According to the same poll, the U.S. military and police are far and away the American institutions with the highest favorability in the eyes of the public.
An overwhelming 82% of respondents indicated they viewed the military favorably – including 42% who had a very favorable view.
Meanwhile three-quarters of respondents said they had a favorable or very favorable opinion of the police.
Although “defund the police” movements have popped up in several deep-blue cities over the past few years, only 19% of Americans said they have an unfavorable view of the police.
The poll also found that a relatively small majority of respondents (57%) had a net favorable opinion of the FBI. Multiple of the bureau’s field offices helped compile a memo targeting Catholics last year.
Hamas – the terrorist group that currently controls the Gaza Strip – was the only institution to score lower than Antifa in the poll. Hamas has a 14% favorability rating among respondents.
Moreover, only a quarter of respondents held a favorable view of the pro-Palestine protests on college campuses that have swept the nation in the past couple of months.
CatholicVote previously reported that some of the groups funding the protesters have financial connections to Hamas.
Less than a majority of the poll’s respondents said they held a favorable view of each of the country’s three major cable news channels.
Of the three, FOX News was viewed most favorably (48%), followed by CNN (44%). Only 39% of the poll’s respondents had a positive view of the left-wing outlet MSNBC.
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Antifa is a loose network of far-left activist groups, many of whom resort to violence against political opponents. Then-candidate Joe Biden made headlines when he called the widely unpopular movement “an idea, not an organization” during the first 2020 presidential debate.
In 2019, two left-wing Democratic members of Congress – Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-NY, and Ayanna Pressley, D-MA – helped raise bail money for dozens of pro-LGBTQ counterprotestors, several of whom were confirmed to be linked to Antifa groups.
The Harris Poll and HarrisX conducted the online survey last week in conjunction with the Harvard Center for American Political Studies (CAPS). Harris polled a sample of 1,660 voters across the country.
The same Harvard/Harris poll also asked respondents about certain political figures.
Of the two dozen individuals listed in the survey, Trump had the highest net favorability rating. Half of the poll’s respondents said they viewed the presumptive Republican nominee in a favorable light.
In second place was X (formerly Twitter) owner Elon Musk (46%), followed by independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (43%) in third.
A majority (53%) of the poll’s respondents said they viewed Biden unfavorably – a higher percentage than those who said the same of former Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and Vice President Kamala Harris (both at 50%).
The poll only found one political figure to have a higher net unfavorability rating than Biden – his son Hunter (56%).
