Obama scores high approval rates worldwide, especially in Africa
BY SUE B. SIMON
With the exception of Russia, and as a result of the tension between the West and Russia where President Obama’s approval rate dropped from 51% in 2013 to 15% this spring, the president is still viewed very favorably throughout the world, especially in Western Europe and Africa, according to a survey conducted this past spring by the Washington-based Pew Research Center.
The poll, which tracked global attitudes toward the president and American foreign policy, surveyed people in 40 countries. The results show that an average of 65% of people worldwide have confidence in Obama for the handling of major world affairs, with only a median 27% lacking confidence in the president. Overall, Obama remains much more popular globally than his predecessor, George W. Bush, but opinions vary significantly across nations and regions.
The president’s image is very positive in Western Europe, and overwhelmingly so in Africa where the Pew Research recently surveyed nine countries, as shown in the chart below.
According to our own survey of people in several regions of Africa, only a fragment of the African intellectual elite has criticized the president for not going far enough when it comes to the environment, when, ironically, the conservative segment of the American political elite thinks the president is going too far.
Overall, Africans may have expressed deep displeasure about what they perceived as Obama’s “neglect” of their continent—owing to his visit to only Ghana in 2009—but that sentiment has been totally erased by the president’s 2013 visit to four African countries, and the historical U.S.-Africa Leadership Summit he convened in Washington in August 2014, bringing to the nation’s capital the largest number ever of African heads of state at the same time.
The president’s upcoming visit to Kenya and Ethiopia next month is expected to push his rating even higher in Africa.
Obama’s extremely high approval rate in Europe back in 2008 when, as a candidate, he addressed a large crowd in Berlin a la John F. Kennedy, and after he entered the White House in 2009, has only since dropped slightly. Environmental issues are one of the few areas where Western Europeans have a quarrel with the president.
Obama’s approval rate in Israel, which was as high as 71%, has now dropped to 49% as a result of the sharp disagreement with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over negotiations with Iran. Conversely, Obama’s popularity in India, has risen from 48% in 2014 to 75%. Clearly, a translation of improved relationship between the two countries. Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited the U.S. last September, and Obama traveled to India in January of this year.
