A BBC poll of almost 22,000 people in 21 countries found that, on average, they preferred Obama to Romney more than five to one. Only one country, Pakistan, would elect Romney.
Results ranked by support for Obama:
Results ranked by support for Romney:
What does it mean that this is such a close race here?
Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
Comments 89
Yrro Simyarin — November 4, 2012
Why would we expect anyone in another country to have an informed opinion on who should be president of the US?
kali — November 4, 2012
It is a close race here because of white men, and their brainwashed wives, who will vote for the Republican no matter what.
komal — November 4, 2012
Isn't 22,000 too small a group to base conclusions upon? It's possible that the support for Romney in Pakistan is linked to the drone attacks though I'm guessing that the supporters don't know that Romney and Obama have the same stance on drones.
Rena — November 4, 2012
Maybe they think that Obama will have better policies for them (whether they will be beneficial for Americans too is another question). It's definitely nice and good for us that other countries like us, but they aren't necessarily thinking of our good when they choose who their favorite candidate is, (hence Pakistan choosing Romney and the other countries choosing Obama).
Rishi — November 4, 2012
If the whole world could vote then the Muslim Brotherhood would beat both Obama and Romney. Combined.
Sam Loy — November 4, 2012
This may be a stupid question: why do the choices of so many of the countries in the graph not equal 100%? In Pakistan we have 15% supporting Romney, and 11% supporting Obama. Are the rest voting for Jill Stein?
Lara — November 4, 2012
No one in Portugal, not even the rightiest of the rightest bring-back-the-monarchy right (which is still considered kind of left by American standards) would ever in a million, billion, trillion years give a single thought to voting for a candidate against universal healthcare.
Chris Bennett — November 4, 2012
I would hazard a few guesses. 1. The rest of the world is interested in how the US relates to the world, many in the States are mostly interested in the local economy. 2. Much of the world has already experienced things like universal health care and other, 'socialist' policies that many Americans are afraid of. 3. Much of the world doesn't have the same fundamental Christian or other religious agenda that is prominent in the States so issues about abortion and gay marriage have a different framing. 4. Most of the world doesn't feel a need to maintain worldwide supremacy because it never had it. I don't necessarily believe this is simply a racial issue because Obama clearly had no problems getting in last time, people who voted for him last time are reconsidering this time and I doubt that's because they've suddenly become racist.
Fernando — November 5, 2012
Obama is very charismatic and he still comes out as the underdog. Everyone dislikes the US that's related to wars in the middle east and that US in people's minds I guess is related to Bush and by extension Romney.
I wouldn't think the reasons are too deep as I don't imagine the world's media to keep a very close look to what goes on in the US election.
Whovian — November 5, 2012
The people who're saying these are all uninformed opinions have clearly never paid attention to European media. The US elections come up a lot in the news and such and a lot people definitely know the basics. I mean, I go to a really small high school in the Netherlands and we've had 'American Election Night' and other such things where we dicsus the US elections.
It's a pretty big deal because, whether we like it or not, the US has a pretty big influence on the rest of the world (case in point: a Dutch politician who started talking about 'real rape' not causing pregnancy. I was so disappointed.) on a lot of levels, economically, politically, everything. So yeah, I'd say most Europeans are about as informed about the US elections as the average American is. Which is to say, not absolutely everything, not everyone, but the majority knows what's going on.
Terry — November 5, 2012
It means that we are better educated and prefer our freedom to bowing to the whims of countries, which for the most part, gave up their freedoms centuries ago.
Concerned Student — November 5, 2012
Nobody's going to point out that Romney would do best in Kenya? This is like Gore not winning Tennessee; if Obama can't even get his homeland to support him, who can he get?
Kate — November 5, 2012
As a person from the UK I think there are a couple of things here -
Option A - the sample is well informed and genuinely holds different views to Americans
A centrist European candidate is far more left wing than Obama. Europeans expect universal health care and a reasonable social safety net. Most of the rest of the word are actually more democrat than republican.
Option B - the sample hate/laughed at George Bush
I wonder if this option is actually even more likely - in the UK George Bush was hated. People who didn't know who their own government hated George Bush. Republicans are tainted by association.
Option C - outside of the USA it is not considered ok to be a Mormon, and that is the only thing the sample knew about Mitt Romney.
Probably there is mixture of all three of these factors going on and lots of other things as well. In the UK the elections have been followed closely - right through from the primaries. I don't know about other countries but if you listen to the news here you know a lot about the election.
WHO WOULD THE WORLD ELECT? | Welcome to the Doctor's Office — November 5, 2012
[...] from SocImages [...]
LeilaM12 — November 5, 2012
I'll just leave this here as some form of response:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=nY0M7IdNl7U
Melanie S. — November 5, 2012
Obama has much better name recognition, which may be a factor in this if the people polled didn't pay much attention to US election news. (I know there are lots of non-US commenters on this site who *have* paid attention, but I wouldn't call the commenters here a representative sample of their respective populations...)
Henry — November 5, 2012
That's because all they watch is CNN, Obama's overseas campaign committee.
Nanvh37 — November 6, 2012
There is another poll that includes Israel and they have 40% support for Romney, but surprisingly, there are about the same amount for Obama.
MM — November 6, 2012
Who gives a flying fuck? This is why our country is going to shit, because our President cares more about the rest of the world. Fuck the rest of the world, this is the stupidest shit I've ever seen.