Plummeting World Opinion Towards the United States – 1999-2005

Data collected from almost 90 thousand interviews in at least 44 nations over the past several years, as part of the Pew Global Attitudes Project, paints a vivid picture of how world wide attitudes towards the United States have plummeted under the leadership of George W. Bush. But in order to appreciate the full magnitude of this decline, one needs to look at comparisons of sequential reports.


Decline of world wide opinions towards the United States from 1999/2000 to 2002

This article by the Pew Research Center, “What the World Thinks in 2002”, compares attitudes towards the United States in 2002 with before Bush took office (1999/2000). The article begins:



To avoid duplication later in this post, I list here only those countries where “favorable” opinions towards the U.S. are compared for 1999/2000 versus 2002, but for which there is no follow-up in 2005:

Favorable opinion towards U.S., 1999/2000 versus 2002

Country..............1999/2000...............2002............Net change
Argentina...............50%.....................34%.............(-16)
Slovak Republic.......74%.....................60%.............(-14)
Kenya...................94%.....................80%.............(-14)
Bolivia....................66%.....................57%.............(-9)
Honduras................87%.....................80%.............(-7)
Peru.......................74%.....................67%.............(-7)
Venezuela...............89%.....................82%.............(-7)
Italy......................76%.....................70%.............(-6)
Japan....................77%.....................72%.............(-5)
Czech Republic........76%.....................71%.............(-5)
South Korea............58%.....................53%.............(-5)
Mexico..................68%.....................64%.............(-4)
Brazil.....................56%.....................52%.............(-4)
Bulgaria................76%.....................72%.............(-4)
Guatemala.............76%.....................82%.............(+6)
Ukraine.................70%.....................80%.............(+10)
Uzbekistan............56%.....................85%.............(+29)
Nigeria.................46%.....................77%.............(+31)

Ok, that doesn’t look too bad. Declining opinion towards the United States in only 14 of 18 countries, and most of the percentage declines aren’t too great.

But this comparison paints a misleadingly rosy picture of world wide opinion towards the U.S. on two accounts. First, this comparison includes no Middle Eastern Muslim countries, because pre-2001 data was not available for them. Opinions towards the United States in those countries is atrocious – for example, only 6% of Egyptians hold a favorable opinion of the United States.

Secondly, the above comparison is misleadingly optimistic because most of the decline in world opinion towards the United States during the Bush Presidency took place after 2002. This article gives some of the reasons for declining opinions of the United States especially after the “War on Terror” picked up steam with the Iraq invasion of 2003:



Decline of world wide opinions towards the United States from 2002 to 2005

A follow-up Pew research study in the summer of 2005 showed that after 2002 world opinions towards the United States declined substantially more than during the period from 1999 to 2002. Here are the results from those countries where comparisons are given for 1999/2000 versus 2005:

Favorable opinion towards U.S., 2002 versus 2005

Country..............1999/2000...............2005............Net change
Morocco.................77%.....................27%.............(-50)
Indonesia...............75%.....................38%.............(-37)
Germany.................78%.....................41%.............(-37)
Turkey...................52%.....................23%.............(-29)
Britain....................83%.....................55%.............(-28)
France...................62%.....................43%.............(-19)
Poland...................79% (in 02).............62%.............(-17)
Canada..................71%.....................59%.............(-12)
Spain....................50%.....................41%.............(-9)
Pakistan................23%.....................23%.............(-0)
Russia..................37%.....................52%.............(+15)


What explains the huge drop in world opinion towards the U.S.?

In case the reason for the declining world opinion towards the U.S. isn’t obvious, the above noted article goes on to explain it:



Specifically, among 14 countries surveyed on this question (Canada, Britain, Germany, France, Spain, Netherlands, Poland, Russia, India, Turkey, Pakistan, Indonesia, Jordan, Lebanon), those who said that the election of Bush made them feel more favorable towards the U.S. ranged from 9% in Lebanon to a whopping 28% in India, whereas those who said that the election of Bush made them feel less favorable towards the U.S. was above 30% in every country except Poland (18%), ranging up to 77% in Germany. The “less favorable” group exceeded the “more favorable” group by more than two to one in every country except Poland – even in Russia, which was one of the few (perhaps the only) countries whose opinions of the U.S. improved since Bush took office.

that certainly does not match with the way Bush was spirited in there recently, with the lights turned off, a security "army" of 5,000 people. Who did these pollsters ask? Musharraf and his cronies? This makes no sense.

Also filed in the No-Sense department: Russia has a BETTER view of the US now? Now that we've become the Nuclear Terror-state Deluxe, they like us more?

The articles didn't talk much about the reasons for the individual variation by country.

With regard to Pakistan, 23% is quite low, so it's hard to go down much from there. Anyhow, Bush has made a very big deal about referring to them as one of our most important allies. Perhaps that made some impression on at least a small portion of the population.

With regard to Russia, who can say? Maybe it has something to do with Bush's praise of Putin. But it's hard to figure because, by more than a two to one margin, Russians said that they would feel more favorable to the U.S. if Bush had lost the 2004 election. How can that be when they are possibly the only country that has improved its opinion of the U.S. since Bush took office? Maybe they've begun to wise up to him. Or maybe there are a number of factors that we aren't aware of that explain some of the variation by county.

,...us, more specifically, the BushCO/neoconster regime and its rule of force policies.

But, thanks for putting it in the form of hard evidence (even if such things will never sway the Bush loyalists).

To a lot of people who voted for Bush a certain kind of pride in the way that others see their country is very important to them, and this might make them very upset, whereas some other things that this administration has done might not upset them. So I thought that perhaps stuff like this could be used for the 06 elections.

The evidence of how badly world opinion has turned against us (and Bush's role in that) is not only evidence of how badly this administration has screwed up -- it's also going to make it more difficult for us to function in every way.

I would hope that some Bush voters would have enough sense to realize that.

I appreciate that you backed your assertion with hard evidence and I didn't intend to demean that in any way. It just seems to me that another form of pride causes folks to be stuck in a state of denial,...or something,...and they will rationalize away so many conditions and events, even criminal or anti-constitutional conduct by this cabal. x(

The type of "pride" that a lot of Bush voters have in their country is a very destructive kind of pride, a kind of pride that is seen as an end in itself, and which does not need to be earned through hard work, thought, or working with others to make a better world. In fact, it is an intolerant kind of pride that tends to lead us into war.

I certainly didn't think that you intended to demean my post, and I appreciated your comments :). I was just trying to better explain what I saw (or hoped to see) as the value of the information in my post.

It seems to me that you (and perhaps most DUers) feel somewhat uncomfortable making appeals to voters based on appealing to the baser sides of their nature -- and perhaps that's what this kind of information does to some extent. I not only understand that, but I share that sentiment, and indeed there is a fine line between what is morally responsible and what isn't when trying to appeal for votes, as all politicians know.

Still, though I am somewhat ambivalent about it, I feel that it is fair to use this kind of information. Unfortunately, we very well may need, in the next election, the votes of people who don't exactly share many of our moral values. Not that I believe that recent elections have been fair by any means, or that Bush would have won a fair election in either 2000 or 2004. But I do believe that the capacity of our opposition to cheat in elections is finite at this time.

Anyhow, world opinion of the U.S. is an issue, I believe, that can appeal to a good majority of Americans. It is an issue, I'm sure, that appeals to different people for different reasons, but nevertheless it is important to a great many people. To me and you and most DUers it's important mostly because the underlying cause. In fact, given what this country has done over the past 5 years, I am glad that world opinion is against us. The fact that world opinion is against us gives me some hope that external pressures may put limits on the imperialistic ambitions of those who run our country. I'm sure that many Bush voters feel bad about the low esteem of our country in the eyes of the world for other reasons. Nevertheless, if pointing it out to them causes them to reasess where they want this country to go, then I think that is probably a worth while thing to do.

This table shows the percent of the population of various countries who had a "more favorable" vs. "less favorable" opinion of the U.S. as a result of the (s)election of Bush in 2004:

Country..........More favorable..........Less favorable..........Net difference
Lebanon.............9%......................57%.....................(-48)
Pakistan............10%.....................36%.....................(-26)
Jordan..............10%.....................31%.....................(-21)
Turkey..............11%.....................62%.....................(-51)
Indonesia...........12%.....................52%.....................(-40)
Germany............14%.....................77%.....................(-63)
Russia..............15%.....................36%.....................(-21)
Britain...............18%.....................62%.....................(-44)
France..............19%.....................74%.....................(-55)
Spain...............19%.....................60%.....................(-41)
Canada..............20%.....................75%.....................(-55)
Poland..............21%.....................18%.....................(+3)
Netherlands........24%.....................72%.....................(-48)
India.................28%.....................35%.....................(-7)