Seventy percent of Americans think retailers should close their doors on Thanksgiving Day, a new HuffPost/YouGov poll finds. Just 12 percent think that stores should remain open, while the remainder aren't sure.
Views on this issue remain basically unchanged from last year, although in recent weeks, a wave of retailers have pointedly emphasized that they will remain closed on Thanksgiving.
"Imagine a world where the holidays were about people again," TJX, the parent company of Marshalls and T.J. Maxx, implored in one ad (although the decision not to open may have more to do with financial considerations than holiday goodwill).
The poll also found that just 9 percent of Americans say they plan to go shopping this Thanksgiving Day. Sixteen percent say they'll be hunting for deals on Black Friday, a more traditional shopping day, while 29 percent think they'll shop over the weekend. The remainder either aren't planning to go shopping or haven't decided yet.
A significant fraction of those people may be busy at work instead.
Twenty-two percent of Americans say that they or someone in their family will be working on Thanksgiving. Those in higher-income households are more likely to have the holiday off: Twenty-eight percent of those in households making less than $40,000 are working or have a relative who is, compared to just 13 percent of those in households that make $80,000 or more.
The HuffPost/YouGov poll consisted of 1,000 completed interviews conducted Nov. 23-25 among U.S. adults, using a sample selected from YouGov's opt-in online panel to match the demographics and other characteristics of the adult U.S. population.
The Huffington Post has teamed up with YouGov to conduct daily opinion polls. You can learn more about this project and take part in YouGov's nationally representative opinion polling. Data from all HuffPost/YouGov polls can be found here. More details on the polls' methodology are available here.
Most surveys report a margin of error that represents some, but not all, potential survey errors. YouGov's reports include a model-based margin of error, which rests on a specific set of statistical assumptions about the selected sample, rather than the standard methodology for random probability sampling. If these assumptions are wrong, the model-based margin of error may also be inaccurate. Click here for a more detailed explanation of the model-based margin of error.