YouGov poll among all adults says York is most popular city

YouGov has awarded the title to York, based on interviews collected across the population in the first three months of the year.

Popularity is defined by YouGov as 'the percentage of people who have a positive opinion of a city'.

Seventy-four per cent of all adults from a survey of 2,793 put York at the top of a list of 48 cities.

Only one per cent of those interviewed said they disliked the city and 22 per cent said they were neutral.

Edinburgh came second with the same popularity score of 74 per cent but was disliked by three per cent of those surveyed.

London was third with a popularity score of 63 per cent, with Cambridge fourth with 62 per cent and Oxford in fifth with 61 per cent.

The research data group’s figures also puts York at the top of the list for four groups of adults it polled – Millennials (74 per cent), Generation X (73 per cent), Baby Boomers (78 per cent) and among men (74 per cent).

Only Edinburgh prevented York from obtaining a clean sweep in the YouGov figures, with 77 per cent of women polled by the group having a positive opinion of the Scottish capital compared to 74 per cent of women feeling the same way about York, pushing it into second place.

YouGov describes its YouGov Ratings as the ‘biggest and boldest attempt ever made to quantify what Britain thinks’.

The city of York is no stranger in recent years to accolades and awards from other areas – from Trip Advisor’s ‘Traveller’s choice’ awards, Which? Magazine’s ‘best city and market’ in 2023, and the same company’s 'favourite destination of 2022’ for a large city. It was also voted top by YouGov in the autumn of 2021.

YouGov’s Top 10 most popular cities (Q1 2024) among all adults surveyed are:

(Popularity is the percentage of people who have a positive opinion of a city)

1. York – 74%
2. Edinburgh – 74%
3. London – 63%
4. Cambridge – 62%
5. Oxford – 61%
6. Brighton – 60%
7. Liverpool – 58%
8. Manchester – 55%
9. Portsmouth – 55%
10. Bristol – 54%