By Maria Puente, USA TODAY
Queen Elizabeth II's popularity has soared, a new poll finds, but not so high that her subjects approve of renaming the Big Ben clock tower the "Elizabeth Tower" in her honor.
In a consensus vote last month, Parliament approved renaming the tower holding the familiar clock to mark the queen's Diamond Jubilee of 60 years on the throne. According to a poll this week by Angus Reid Public Opinion, the queen's approval rating stood at 80%, up 6 percentage points since January.
The high ratings are partly the result of the big jubilee celebrations in June in London, when the queen and the royal family starred in four days of pomp and pageantry shown around the world.
So it's something of a surprise that the poll also found that 54% of the 2009 people surveyed reject the idea of renaming the tower at Westminster Palace holding Big Ben.
The poll found that the queen's grandson and his wife, Prince William and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge (a.k.a Kate Middleton), remain numbers one and two in royal popularity, with the queen in third place and Prince Harry in fourth. Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, the wife of the queen's heir, Prince Charles, remains the most unpopular senior royal, with 44% holding a negative view of her, but even her ratings edged up a bit in the first half of the jubilee year.
But why the resistance to renaming the clock tower?
Mario Canseco, vice president of Angus Reid, told The Express newspaper that Brits don't like to mess with their important symbols.
"I think it just shows the public don't want to see any change to what they regard as an iconic building."
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