Prince Harry’s Book Is Selling Millions. Why Is He So Unpopular?
Extraordinary new polls show that Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s popularity has plummeted in America as well as the U.K. since the prince published Spare–and yet his book continues to break sales records, has fired up his base online, and garnered plenty of flat-out rave reviews (most recently earning praise from The Daily Beast’s founding editor and the royal éminence grise, Tina Brown).
The counterintuitive state of affairs—that an increasingly unpopular person could write what is turning out to be the world’s most popular book right now—has left many scratching their heads as they try to make sense of the newest data out of America—a poll of 2,000 American voters conducted for Newsweek six days after the book’s publication.
In the space of a month, the poll, carried out by Redfield and Wilton, shows Prince Harry has dropped a staggering 45 points in United States public opinion while Meghan has dropped 36. They are even losing support among the young, who have been their most reliably faithful constituency, the full data shows, with 31 percent of 18-24s viewing Harry positively and 38 percent viewing him negatively.