Three-quarters of Britons expect Halloween to go ahead as normal this year
With life almost back to normal compared to last year, more Britons are hopeful that they will be able to celebrate Halloween as they usually would this year.
New research by Ipsos shows high hopes for Halloween fans in 2021 as 76% of Britons expect Halloween to be celebrated as it normally would this year. This time last year, only 20% thought it was likely to continue as usual. A similar proportion (77%) expect households to mix freely.
Looking specifically at those who say they would normally celebrate Halloween, almost all expect to do so as normal this year; overall 43% of Britons normally celebrated it in some way in previous years and 42% expect to do so this year. Last year, in the midst of Covid, only 28% hoped to partake in the same activities they would have done normally compared to 36% who said they would normally have celebrated Halloween in previous years.
All Halloween activities look set to go ahead, 10% say they will take a child trick-or-treating this year (10% say they normally do this) while 11% will visit friends/family in another household (10% normally) and 6% will go to a pub/restaurant (6% normally). Slightly fewer will host Halloween festivities, 11% say they normally would have friend/family from outside of their household visit their home, only 7% expect to do so this year.
While many don’t celebrate Halloween, a third (34%) are looking forward to it a great deal or a fair amount with 14% saying they will enjoy it more this year than normal.
Keiran Pedley, Research Director at Ipsos, said:
The British public are much more optimistic about Halloween going ahead as normal this year than they were last year. Although pessimistic about the direction of the country generally, they are clearly more confident that life is returning to some semblance of normality in terms of household mixing and the celebration of holidays.
Technical note:
- Ipsos interviewed a representative quota sample of 1,029 adults aged 16-75 in Great Britain using its online Ipsos Digital omnibus between 22nd and 24th Oct 2021.
- The data has been weighted to the known offline population proportions for age, working status and social grade within gender, and for government office region and education, to reflect the adult population of Great Britain. For more information please contact the team at https://www.ipsosomnibussurveys.com/