Social and liberal democracy come out top for voters
Communism, anarchism and fascism are the three least popular ideologies with British voters according to new polling from Opinium:
The figure that most struck me was that the highest ‘don’t know’ score came in for libertarianism. For all the very vocal and verbose libertarian voices in some parts of the internet, it is noise that does not translate that well into explaining and converting others. A reminder for anyone campaigning online.
Maybe we should go back to using the name “Social and Liberal Democrats” for the Party. It would more accurately describe us and would potentially be more popular….
Also more unwieldy and it suggests there is some kind of opposition between being social and being liberal. I suspect the higher anti score for Liberal Democracy compared to Social Democracy is simply because there is no longer a Social Democratic Party, there is a party called The Liberal Democrats, and parties, thank heaven, have policies and images that gain support from some people and offend others.
I’m not surprised by the high Don’t Know score for Libertarianism, as in the UK this is an academic word not in common usage and not identified with any present or past party.
While the anti-Fascist majority is huge, it’s a little worrying that 7% of people like Fascism. That’s a bit higher than I’d have expected, given that in the UK, many racists recoil from the word “Fascism”.