The presidential election is likely to be close. But if the
whole world could vote, Obama would win big.
The BBC reports:
A BBC World Service opinion poll has found sharply higher overseas approval ratings for US President Barack Obama than Republican challenger Mitt Romney.
An average of 50% favoured Mr Obama, with 9% for Mr Romney, in the survey of 21,797 people in 21 countries.
Only Pakistan's respondents said they would prefer to see Mr Romney win November's election.
France was the most strongly pro-Obama (72%).
The survey was conducted by GlobeScan/PIPA between 3 July and 3 September.
Last month, the
German Marshall Fund had a similar finding:
The 11th annual Transatlantic Trends survey out today reveals that transatlantic majorities still approve of U.S. President Barack Obama’s foreign policy, and that Mitt Romney is largely an unknown in Europe.
Transatlantic Trends 2012 (www.transatlantictrends.org) shows 82% of Europeans said they had a favorable opinion of the American president. When Europeans were asked about Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee, 38% of respondents either said they did not know or refused to answer, and 39% said their view was unfavorable; 23% reported a favorable view.
...
President Obama is not as popular at home as he is in Europe, although a majority of Americans (57%) said their overall view of the president was favorable, 40% unfavorable. Romney is seen unfavorably by a plurality in the United States (49%). If Europeans could vote in the U.S. election, 75% of EU residents would vote for Obama, and only 8% would vote for Romney.
The Hill reports on a conspicuous exception to the pattern:
Israelis prefer Mitt Romney over President Obama by wide margins, according to the latest polling from the Israel Democracy Institute and Tel Aviv University.
The Republican candidate leads Obama 57 percent to 22 percent, the organizations' Peace Index for October found in its October survey.
The gap is especially marked among self-described right-wingers — 70 percent of whom prefer Romney — while Obama gets three times more support from Arab Israelis, 45 percent versus 15 percent.
