With the end of the Cold War also came the end of any sense that politics was a clearly defined ideological struggle between ‘isms’. The past twenty years has seen a muddying of the ideological map, both internationally – Communist-Capitalism in China, for example – and domestically, where British politicians have become nervous publicly identifying with any formal ideology.

Ed Miliband recently got into hot water for appearing to say that he would bring back Socialism (and hasn’t used the word since), and while David Cameron has occasionally put forward various iterations of “responsible capitalism”, “popular capitalism” and “moral capitalism,” the phrases have not tended to stick.

So where do these big words now stand in voters’ minds? Is the era of grand ideological narratives over or could there be an appetite for a new ‘ism’ to sign up to?

We asked a representative sample of almost 2,000 UK adults whether they have a positive or negative impression of the words ‘Capitalism’ and ‘Socialism’ – and the results were strikingly balanced.

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Both Capitalism and Socialism now divide the country roughly evenly, with around 40% of UK adults feeling positively and negatively towards each (with around 20% not sure).

The political parties tend as you would expect, while a significant minority (29%) of Labour voters now feel positively about the concept of Capitalism, and 15% of Conservative voters feel positively about Socialism. There is very little enthusiasm overall – out of all the people who expressed an opinion either way, less than 20% said they feel ‘very’ positive or negatively about either concept.

There are striking social variations, too. Women are much less likely than men to feel positively about Capitalism, and less likely to feel strongly about ‘isms’ in general. Crucially, the younger generations are less and less likely to think in these terms at all, with over 30% choosing ‘don’t know’ for both Capitalism and Socialism.

Something different please, but I don’t know what

Most people think that both the UK and the world are predominantly run on a Capitalist model. But whatever word they choose to describe the status quo, we asked people to consider whether they feel that the current system is more or less the best way of running things, or whether they imagine there is a better way. At this point many of the dramatic variations by demographic group fade away – the result is much more constant across all groups. Young people are marginally more confident in their ability to come up with ways to change to world – but at 20% the numbers are still relatively small.

Of course it is impossible to know how people would have answered this kind of question twenty or thirty years ago. But the level of dissatisfaction does seem remarkable – as does the overwhelming admission from all kinds of people that, although they think a better system must be out there, they don’t know what it is.

Anyone who said that they DO know of better alternatives had the opportunity to write a description of what they meant, and we analysed the responses. Over 50% touched on some sense of greater equality or fairer distribution of wealth, and other popular ideas included democratic participation, globalism, national independence, a greater role for religion and Environmentalism.

It seems we are in a time where huge numbers of people are dissatisfied with the way the world is run, but no alternative movement yet seems convincing enough, or inspiring enough, to gather significant momentum. It is the same stumbling block that undermined the Occupy Wall Street movement in 2012 and Russell Brand's much-mocked call for a 'revolution' in 2013: when asked what they would do instead, they need a coherent philosophy that translates into a set of policies. In other words, there may be an appetite for a new 'ism'.