site.btaOne in Four Bulgarians Says 1980s Were Best Decade - Gallup International Survey

To a quarter of Bulgarians the 1980s were the best decade, according to a survey by Gallup International Balkan, the polling agency said on Wednesday. The poll was commissioned by the newspaper Capital, asking the question "What was the best decade?"

It was conducted face-to-face with tablets on September 20 – 27, 2022 among 1,009 adult Bulgarians. The sample is representative of the adult population of the country and 1% of the total sample equals about 54,000 people.

A quarter of all respondents indicated the 1980s as the best decade. According to 13.9%, life was beautiful in the 1970s, followed by the 1990s (13.6%), the first decade of this century (13.3%) and the second decade of this century (12.2%), the agency said.

The greatest share of respondents who ranked the 1980s first were aged 46 to 65.

The notion that one loves the decade of one's youth the most is confirmed when one examines public attitudes toward the seventies. The generation that most strongly associates the disco decade with having the best time are respondents aged 66 and over, the pollsters said. Younger generations express much less sentiment about the period (and have no recollection of it). For respondents under 35, the "seventies" response does not even reach 2%.

Something is breaking in public perceptions vis-à-vis the nineties, according to analysts at Gallup International. The generation aged 36 to 45, which is most expected to perceive the 1990s as the best, is rather split. The same is true for the generation aged 26 to 35. More than two-thirds of those aged between 26 and 35 could not judge which decade was best for them, nor could a fifth of those aged between 36 and 45.

The decades of the new millennium are best appreciated by the youngest under the age of 25. They also include the highest proportions of "can't judge" responses. Perhaps the expectation among the young is that the best decade is yet to come, the sociologists said.