On 27 November 2023, we launched a new report with the #SharedIslandUnit examining social and political attitudes in Ireland and Northern Ireland.

In Northern Ireland, there was a general rise in satisfaction with democracy since 1998, but a decline has been seen since 2016, and political trust, media trust, and especially optimism for the future have seen longer-term declines, particularly in the last few years observed (2016-2018) for Northern Ireland. These declines occurred at a time of renewed political instability, including the Brexit vote and repeated collapse of power-sharing from 2017 onwards.

In Ireland, attitudes over the past two decades have been significantly shaped by the 2008/09 recession and the subsequent period of austerity. With the onset of the crash (2007/08), satisfaction with democracy, political trust, media trust, trust in other people and optimism all saw substantial declines, while support for reducing income inequality increased.

Ireland started and finished the study period with some of the most positive social and political attitudes in Western Europe. However, since 2019, Ireland has seen some attitudes becoming less positive.

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