Israelis can’t stand President Barack Obama even more than Iranians can do without him, but they like German Chancellor Angela Merkel as the most popular world leader, a new survey reveals.
The poll in Israel was part of an international survey of 65 world leaders by WIN/Gallup International. Ma’agar Mochot, headed by Prof. Yitzchak Katz, carried out the survey in Israel.
One of the questions posed was:
What is your opinion regarding each of the following global leaders: very favorable position, sympathetic to some extent, not sympathetic to some extent, or very unfavorable?
Each leader was ranked twice, once with a favorable ranking and once with an unfavorable ranking, and the final score was determined by subtracting the negative votes from the positive votes.
Obama was popular worldwide with a 30 percent rating on the plus side, much better than can be said for what Americans think of him.
In Israel, he scored a minus 22 percent, even worse than the minus 21 percent ranking by Iranians.
On the positive side, the most popular world leader for Israelis is German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who scored a net 38 percent on the plus side, far ahead of the distant second place leader, Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron.
Israelis also placed Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, French President Francois Hollande, Russian President Vladimir Putin and President of China Shi Tz’infing above Obama.
However, President Obama can console himself that Israelis don’t dislike him as much as they do Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, Saudi Arabia’s King Salman bin Abdul Aziz, and Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff.
On the other hand, Russians gave President Obama a disastrous minus 83 percent rating, the lowest of any country. However, he is popular in Kosovo with a plus 73 percent rating. Close behind is Vietnam
Putin is much more unpopular with Americans than with Israelis. He scored minus 44 in the United States, and only minus 20 in Israel.