Americans have strong opinions on everything, including movies, sports, food and other countries.
When it comes to other nations, Americans definitely have preferences, especially when things are put in terms of enemies and allies. For example, a majority of Americans say England is the U.S.’s greatest ally, while North Korea is its greatest enemy, according to a Politico/Morning Consult survey published Wednesday.
Respondents were asked to say whether they felt specific countries were “an ally of the United States, friendly but not an ally, unfriendly, or an enemy of the United States.”
The survey found that the three countries that ranked the highest with American voters in the “ally” category were England, Canada and France, which posted favorability rankings of 69, 68 and 52 percent, respectively.
On the flip side of things, North Korea, Iran and Russia were ranked highest on the “enemy” scale, coming in with 52, 41 and 18 percent, respectively.
Oddly enough, 12 percent of survey respondents also said they considered South Korea to be an enemy of the United States. That’s just one percentage point behind the number of respondents who said the same about Saudi Arabia.
The Politico poll, which was conducted between Feb. 16-19, surveyed 2,013 registered voters and it has a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.
The findings of the enemy/ally survey are line with a separate batch of information published recently by Gallup. That survey also found that North Korea is the least popular country with Americans, while Canada is the most popular.
After Canada, which 92 percent of Gallup respondents said they viewed favorably, the three countries that rate the highest with Americans are England, Japan and France, which posted favorability rankings of 91, 85 and 83 percent, respectively.
The least-favorite side of the survey is a different story. Aside from North Korea, which only 11 percent of respondents said they viewed favorably, the least-popular countries for Americans are Iran, Syria and Afghanistan, which come in with miserable favorability rankings of 12, 17 and 17 percent, respectively.
“Americans have widely varying views of foreign nations around the world, with a huge gap of 81 points separating Canada, the country Americans like most, from North Korea, the country Americans like least,” the Gallup survey noted. “These country ratings generally reflect historical patterns of diplomatic and cultural relations, along with the associations between countries — such as Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Syria — with terrorism and nuclear threats.”
It added, “Americans’ basic opinions of foreign countries are fairly stable on a year-to-year basis, but there have been more dramatic changes at times, such as with France around the 2003 Iraq War and with Cuba and Russia in recent years. Subsequent reports on Gallup.com will explore trends in the public’s views of foreign countries in more detail.”
The Gallup survey was conducted from Feb. 1-5. It sampled 1,035 adults over the age of 18 and it has a margin of error of plus or minus four percentage points.
