32% Will Tune In To The Royal Wedding

The Royal Wedding between Great Britain’s Prince Henry (Harry) of Wales and American actress Meghan Markle is set to take place Saturday morning. Though Americans don’t see this wedding getting quite the media fanfare that Prince William and Catherine Middleton’s “wedding of the century” received eight years ago, nearly as many will be watching this wedding as the last.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 41% of American Adults say the media is paying too much attention to the royal nuptials. Forty percent (40%) say the level of media attention is about right, while just six percent (6%) say there’s not enough coverage. Thirteen percent (13%) aren’t sure how they feel about the amount of coverage the impending wedding is receiving. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

Just days before the elder prince’s 2011 wedding, 58% of Americans said the media was giving too much attention to the event. Twenty-nine percent (29%) said the level of attention was about right, and just three percent (3%) said there wasn’t enough coverage.

One-in-three (32%) say they’re at least somewhat likely to watch Saturday’s ceremony, with 14% who say they’re Very Likely to do so. Sixty-two percent (62%) are unlikely to watch the royal wedding, including 38% who say they’re Not At All Likely to watch. These findings are similar to those from the 2011 royal nuptials and those who were following Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee in 2012.

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The survey of 1,000 American Adults was conducted on May 10 and 13, 2018 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

In November, 79% of Americans said their fellow Americans pay too much attention to celebrity news and not enough attention to news that has real impact on their lives.

Women and adults 40 and older are more likely than men and younger adults to say they’ll watch the wedding of Prince Harry and Markle. Forty-six percent (46%) of men believe the media is showing too much coverage of the event, while women (47%) are more likely to say that the level of media coverage is about right.

Forty-five percent (45%) of black Americans plan on tuning into Saturday’s wedding, compared to roughly 30% of whites and other minorities. Black adults are also the most likely to say that the amount of media coverage is about right.

A majority (71%) of those who are Very Likely to watch the weekend’s nuptials say the amount of media coverage is about right. Sixty-one percent (61%) who are Not At All Likely to tune in say there’s too much coverage.

In 2012, 62% of Americans said the British royal family is an important symbol for England as a nation, up from 51% in April of the prior year when the Queen’s grandson, Prince William, wed Middleton. At the time, only 14% thought England should abolish its monarchy, while 24% were undecided.

In today’s 24/7 news cycle, most Americans still think the media is obsessed with getting the story first, when they think they should be focused on getting it right.

That may help explain why just 20% of Likely U.S. Voters believe most news stories that are based on anonymous sources. Fifty-two percent (52%) don’t believe stories from anonymous sources, but 27% are not sure.

Additional information from this survey and a full demographic breakdown are available to Platinum Members only.

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