Here’s what Brits thought of politics in 1952 – and what they think now
Key Points
- More in Common repeated a set of questions Gallup first asked Britons in 1952
- In 1952, 59% of Britons saw a real difference between the political parties and 32% did not; in 2026 it is 39% against 52%
- Working class self-identification has fallen from 46% in 1952 to 35% today
- Labour and the Conservatives took 97% of the vote at the 1951 general election
- More in Common's current MRP projects a hung parliament with Reform UK 30 seats short of a majority
Polling group More in Common has put a set of questions to Britons that Gallup first asked in 1952, and the one of the biggest changes seen over the last 74 years is that voters no longer see much difference between the political parties.
The group revived the historic questions and ran them with a fresh 2026 sample, publishing the comparison in its weekly newsletter and discussing the results on its Opinion Brief podcast.
The exercise covers two of the oldest measures in British polling: whether the parties genuinely differ from one another, and which social class people place themselves in. Both readings have moved, and one of them has inverted entirely.
Much of a muchness
In 1952, 59% of Britons said a real difference existed between the political parties, while 32% took the view that they amounted to much the same thing. In 2026, those figures have flipped.
Only 39% now see a meaningful difference between the parties, and 52% say they are about the same.
The 1952 reading followed a general election the previous year in which Labour and the Conservatives took 97% of the vote between them. Brits at that point faced a genuine two-party contest and still, by a clear majority, told Gallup the parties stood for different things. Seven decades later, with a far wider field of parties on the ballot, a majority say the opposite.
Fewer Brits think of themselves as working class
The class question has moved in one direction rather than reversing. In 1952, nearly half of Britons (46%) identified as working class. That figure now stands at 35%.
More Brits today place themselves in the middle or lower-middle class than did so in 1952. The one constant across both eras is the top of the scale: very few Brits identified as upper class in 1952, and very few do now.
The findings land at a point when More in Common’s own current modelling shows British politics splintering rather than consolidating. Its latest MRP projects that an election held tomorrow would produce a hung parliament, with Reform UK finishing 30 seats short of a majority on 28% of the vote – a vote share that would have placed a party a distant third in 1951.
The firm has also modelled how the same electorate would behave under proportional voting systems, work it carried out for the Guardian.
Those projections found that voters remain fragmented regardless of which system counts their ballots, with no single party reaching a majority under any of the alternatives tested.
The two-party system that delivered 97% of the vote to Labour and the Conservatives in 1951 operated in a country where most people saw a real choice between them and nearly half described themselves as working class.
Both of those conditions have now weakened, and the party system built on them has weakened alongside them.
