Poll: Obama's Popularity Lifts U.S. Global Image

July 23, 2009— -- The verdict is in: President Barack Obama is popular around the world and improving the U.S.'s global image.

A Pew Research Poll released today shows that the image of the United States has "improved markedly in most parts of the world," largely because of the high levels of global confidence and trust in Obama. Improvements were especially high in Western Europe, but attitudes toward America also warmed in Canada, Mexico, Argentina and urban populations in Brazil, India and China. Nearly 27,000 interviews were conducted in 24 nations, as well as the Palestinian territories.

"His personal popularity and new respect for the U.S. having elected him translates positively for the U.S. image," former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said today, speaking on a Washington, D.C., panel with Pew Research Center president Andrew Kohut and former U.N. Ambassador John Danforth, who's also a former GOP senator from Missouri.

The survey notes that confidence in Obama's "foreign policy judgments stands behind a resurgent U.S. image in many countries" and those surveyed indicated a belief that Obama will "do the right thing" in regard to world affairs.

The survey, conducted by the non-partisan Pew Research Center's Global Attitudes Project, showed that favorable ratings for both the nation and Americans have soared in Western Europe. In Germany, favorable opinion of the United States more than doubled, from 31 percent in 2008 to 64 percent in 2009.

There were "signs of improvement" in predominantly Muslim countries that held overwhelming negative views of the United States during the George W. Bush administration.

Among predominantly Muslim countries, the United States was most popular in Indonesia, where Obama spent part of his childhood. For the first time in the course of Pew's surveys among Muslim publics, confidence in Obama topped confidence in Osama bin Laden.

There was only a modest increase in favorable views of the United States among Muslims in the Middle East, with the largest being in Jordan, with a 6 percent increase.

While the survey showed that overall opinion of the United States remained "largely unfavorable" among Muslims in the Middle East, there was a three-fold increase in confidence in Obama from the Bush administration in 2008 in Egypt and Jordan.