IEA Head of Political Economy Kristian Niemietz has written in CapX on new polling for the Realities of Socialism project showing that socialism continues to be popular among under-35s and whether we can stem the ideology’s increasing popularity.

Kristian wrote:

“The report’s findings are, to some extent, a confirmation of what we already know. Over the past seven years or so, there have been plenty of surveys which show that Millennials (people born between the early 1980s and the mid-to-late 1990s) and Zoomers (people born since then) in the English-speaking world tend to support socialist ideas.

“So what can be done?

“Broadly speaking – we need both a ‘materialist’ and an ‘idealist’ response. We know from previous studies that high housing costs tend to push people in a leftward direction. Britain’s self-inflicted housing crisis is therefore the perfect breeding ground for a socialism revival.

“But we also need to get better at debunking the fatal misunderstanding that socialism was a noble idea, which has just been ‘distorted’ or ‘badly implemented’ in practice. Socialism has been tried many times, and every socialist experiment has ended in abject failure.”

Read Kristian’s full piece here.

You can also check out the new polling by the Fraser Institute Realities of Socialism polling here.