Anti-war sentiment in Worcester

Each Tuesday afternoon for years there’s been a peace vigil in Lincoln Square. To pass the time, the vigilers count the number of positive and negative responses from people driving by.

Apparently the upcoming State of the Union speech had Worcesterites riled up today–check out the high ratio of positive:negative reponses (117:6). We haven’t seen anti-war sentiment like this since the height of Cindy Sheehan Fever.

I think that the vigil gets a higher ratio of positive responses than you’d get if you did a phone survey; most people shy away from confronting demonstrators if they disagree. But the trend over time is a different story. I think it reflects the changing mood of the area.

(This scatterplot is designed for the page rather than the screen–hope you don’t have to squint too much. A screen-friendly scatterplot will debut in 2006. Some weeks have no dot on the scatterplot because nobody wrote the numbers down.)