The Royal Popularity List: Brits pick their favourite Royal Family member in new Channel 5 documentary — but it’s not King Charles
An upcoming television documentary will reveal that the Prince and Princess of Wales have been voted as the two most popular royals by the British public, but the top spot will not be revealed until after broadcast.
Channel 5 program, Royal Popularity ListIt notes that Prince William and Catherine, who married in 2011, were separated by just one point in a YouGov poll of more than 2,000 British adults.
Former Duke of York Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was ranked 14th and was the least popular person. Stripped of his titles by the King in the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, he polls consistently poorly.
His ex-wife Sarah Ferguson, who has also been criticized for her links to the disgraced financier, was ranked 13th. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex ranked 11th and 12th respectively.
Both Catherine and William are seen as “warm and hard-working” in the documentary, which will look at “who we proudly lay on the tea towel and whom we choose to banish to the Tower”.
They are followed by the Crown Princess in third place, which means the King is in fourth place.
The survey found that Anne was seen as “strong, reliable and hard-working” and was widely admired for her no-nonsense attitude, honesty and devotion to duty.
According to the program, his mother Queen Elizabeth II. Charles, who becomes king upon Elizabeth’s death in 2022, is seen as hard-working, reliable and forward-thinking.
In fifth place is Anne’s daughter Zara Tindall, while the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh are in sixth and seventh place respectively.
The Queen was ranked eighth in the poll, followed by Princess Beatrice and her sister Princess Eugenie.
The survey comes as support for the monarchy has reached a record low, according to one study.
Although more than half of people would prefer to keep the royal family rather than an elected head of state, the proportion who believe it is important to preserve the monarchy has fallen to 51 per cent in 2024 from 86 per cent when the question was first asked for the British Social Attitudes (BSA) survey in 1983.
This is the lowest level of support recorded since the National Center for Social Research (NatCen) began tracking public opinion nearly 40 years ago.
Royal Popularity List It will air on Saturday at 21.00 at 5.
