New data contradicts Channel 4's controversial claims

Welcome to the 150th edition of The Week in Polls (TWIP) which returns to the story of GenZ and that speech by Channel 4’s Chief Executive, Alex Mahon.

Then it is a summary of the latest national voting intention polls and a round-up of party leader ratings, followed by, for paid-for subscribers, 10 insights from the last week’s polling and analysis.

This time, those ten include new analysis of voters who switched from the Conservatives to Lib Dem at the 2024 general election.

But before we get down to the all that, a big hello to all the new readers since last week. Someone has clearly sent this newsletter around one corner of government… and if you know others who would like to join them, please do share away:

A plug too about for my latest election-related book review:

Get In: The Inside Story of Labour Under Starmer

And with that, on with the show.

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Only 1-in-20 Gen Z support a dictatorship

A quick recap for newer readers. Channel 4 put out research, backed up with a heavily footnoted speech by its Chief Executive, claiming growing support for authoritarianism in the country, with such support particularly high among Gen Z.

The report and speech got plenty of media and social media coverage. You might think that the combination of Channel 4, which prides itself on its fact checking, and a forest of footnotes would mean it was a solid story too.

But… when I went fact checking a key part of the Chief Exec’s speech, the claims I checked rather fell apart:

So what does that give us to backup the claim that there is “ clear evidence” of “an increasing shift towards authoritarianism”? One data sources that says yes, one that says no, one data source that says nothing and one that says both yes and no.

More than one high quality data source also contradicted the claim about support for authoritarianism being particularly high among Gen Z compared with other generations.

But when in a hole, Channel 4 decided to continue digging. They refused to publish the data tables for the poll they had commissioned and the additional data they cited to attempt to back up their CEO’s speech did not actually do so. My favourite was the Bulgarian data:

A one percentage point between young and old Bulgarians is not the best of bases from which to conclude that support for authoritarianism is on the rise in the UK.

However, we do now have some further data. It is from Bobby Duffy, Director of the Policy Institute at King’s College London, whose work I had previously cited in my coverage of the Channel 4 story.

He and the team have fresh data from February this year, with findings that are good news for democracy but not so good for Channel 4.

First, we have the overall picture about GenZ’s attitudes to democracy. This shows that support for authoritarianism varies depending on the question wording:

The explicit use of ‘dictator’ in the third of those triggers notably more disagreement.

Moreover, when pressed many of those who support some form of authoritarianism back away from their views:

Part of all this it seems is that for some people the idea of a leader being able to get on and do things is attractive - and while they do not want such a leader bogged down (as they see it) with lots of democratic process, they do want to have some sort of democratic choice over who that leader is.

As a couple of the verbatim answers from those polled said:

“We need someone strong and experienced, however elections and parliament should still be considered.”

“I believe that strong leaders can bring decisive actions, clear direction and stability. It’s more about the need for effective leadership rather than disregarding democratise [sic] principles.”

The varying answers depending on the wording, and the fact that apparent authoritarians can be ‘squeezed’ back to supporting democracy with a follow-up question, caught the eye of Chris Prosser, of the British Election Study (BES):

This is a really excellent investigation into the claim that around half of Gen Z want a dictator.

It makes a compelling case that the combination of inattentive respondents and question wording inflates apparent support for non-democracy considerably - small tweaks lead to much smaller numbers.

Add all the pieces together therefore and the overall picture is:

Or as Bobby Duffy puts it:

We always think this latest generation of young people are the worst in history. You can look at any era and find similar sentiments, going back to Socrates in 400BC,¹ who lamented the ‘disrespect for authority’ shown by the young people of his day. This has been supercharged for us today with the media and social media’s use of generational labels to stereotype and divide generations.

The reality is that nothing like half of Gen Z actually support a dictatorship in the UK, in any meaningful sense. They have significant issues with how the political system has not delivered for them, but they’re not looking to tear it up and replace it with autocratic leadership, and exaggerating that sense can only add to division and risk encouraging that outcome…

We do have serious issues with their faith in the system and our institutions, but mischaracterising these concerns only gets in the way of addressing them.

A less sanguine take is that from historian Robert Saunders who warns:

The report is right that we shouldn't stigmatise "Gen Z". But we don't need to, in order to be worried.

In 2019, much older journalists declared that "Parliament has forfeited its right to remain in existence". A PM in his 50s castigated a "broken Parliament" and joked about violence against MPs…

In short: we should be worried about the politics of "Gen Z", as portrayed in this report. Not because they represent some mad new generation, that's lost faith in the ideals of their elders. But because those elders have shown precisely where those ideas can lead.

That is a salutary warning, though I draw a different conclusion: knowing that the dangers of disillusionment with democracy are not a Gen Z focused issue but a more general one is both reassuring (the long term trends seem to be headed in a good, or at least not deteriorating, direction) and also helps us better take action to protect democracy.

Reports that get the longer-term trends and the relative views of Gen Z wrong both exaggerate the issue and mislead over the best remedies.

You can read the full report from Bobby Duffy and colleagues here.

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Voting intentions and leadership ratings

Here are the latest national general election voting intention polls, sorted by fieldwork dates.

Most pollsters are now putting the Conservatives in third place, although the margins are often small, within the zone of doubt when you take into account the full range of possible polling errors. As the British Polling Council puts it:

All polls are subject to a wide range of potential sources of error. On the basis of the historical record of the polls at recent general elections, there is a 9 in 10 chance that the true value of a party’s support lies within 4 points of the estimates provided by [a] poll, and a 2 in 3 chance that they lie within 2 points.

Next, a summary of the the leadership ratings, sorted by name of pollster. Ed Davey continues generally to have the best net scores, and different wording from different pollsters produces big differences in the gap between Starmer and Badenoch’s net scores:

For more details, and updates during the week as each new poll comes out, see my regularly updated tables here and follow The Week in Polls on Bluesky.

For the historic figures, including Parliamentary by-election polls, see PollBase.

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Catch-up: the previous two editions

Why we should be thinking about 1985

How populists win culture battles while losing the culture war

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New analysis of Conservative to Lib Dem vote switchers, and other polling news

The following 10 findings from the most recent polls and analysis are for paying subscribers only, but you can sign up for a free trial to read them straight away.

1. James Breckwoldt, who is becoming a regular presence in this newsletter, has