Which Countries Do Americans Like? Do Other Countries Like Us?

Gallup is out with the results of a poll it did last month asking Americans whether they have favorable or unfavorable views about twenty-two other countries. Gallup has been asking this question every February for a dozen years, and the overall results have been consistent. Americans have a soft spot for fellow English-speaking countries, and they take a dim view of Middle Eastern countries.

Here is what Gallup reports:

Some quick observations:

So we know how Americans feel about the world. How does the world feel about America? Gallup didn’t ask this question, but the Pew Research Center has (though of a slightly different set of countries). Here is what Pew reported last June:

Pew’s findings in many ways are the inverse of Gallup’s. Americans don’t like Middle Eastern countries, and they don’t much like the United States. But there is one significant difference between the two polls: The British don’t have nearly the same level of affection for the United States as Americans have for Great Britain. Indeed, the French rate the United States significantly more positively than the British do.

This finding is not peculiar to Pew.  A YouGov poll done last summer found that 40 percent of Britons selected “bullying” as the word they associated with the United States, and just 12 percent thought that the United States is defined by its respect for human rights. So the “special relationship” between the United States and Great Britain doesn’t look to be that special on the other side of the Atlantic. You are welcome to use the comment box below to speculate as to why.