A myth we often hear that the Royal family is a popular institution that enjoys wide support as a result, The facts are that Royal popularity or otherwise doesn’t have an impact on support, and that the big thing that helps (or hinders) the Royals is media coverage.

A recent poll of polls published online (graph above) demonstrates this point neatly. The poll of polls covers all opinion polls in Australia since the 1999 republic referendum. In that referendum, the republic side lost, not because the monarchy was popular (as the polls above demonstrate) but because the republic side was divided.

Since then, the monarchy has enjoyed three periods of being more popular than a republic: when Prince William married Kate Middleton, when Prince Harry married Meaghan Markle, and most recently when the Queen passed away.

What this neatly demonstrates is that positive media coverage of the Royals, especially around events such as the birth of a child, weddings and funerals, are what makes the monarchy popular - not the Royals themselves.

The most concerning aspect of the graph above for republic campaigns in New Zealand and Australia is the slow trend upwards of the “undecideds”. This is to be expected since the republic referendum was now over 24 years ago in Australia, and so the public’s exposure to the debate has slowly fallen. The goal of any republic campaign therefore is to pick up more of the undecided supporters to build the constituency for change.