Dem
51
GOP
49
Morning Consult has done something rather interesting. They polled voters in 20 countries to see how much they approve of their leaders. Here's the list of leaders who were asked about, presented in alphabetical order:
And now, here are the numbers but with all of the names, excepting Joe Biden, withheld:
| Leader (Country) | Approve | No Opinion | Disapprove | Net |
| ??? | 78% | 4% | 18% | +60 |
| ??? | 58% | 12% | 30% | +28 |
| ??? | 60% | 5% | 35% | +26 |
| ??? | 55% | 13% | 32% | +23 |
| ??? | 49% | 7% | 44% | +5 |
| ??? | 48% | 6% | 46% | +3 |
| Joe Biden (United States) | 42% | 7% | 50% | -8 |
| ??? | 37% | 15% | 48% | -10 |
| ??? | 38% | 8% | 54% | -16 |
| ??? | 35% | 12% | 52% | -17 |
| ??? | 39% | 5% | 56% | -17 |
| ??? | 36% | 11% | 53% | -18 |
| ??? | 33% | 14% | 53% | -19 |
| ??? | 32% | 11% | 57% | -25 |
| ??? | 32% | 6% | 61% | -29 |
| ??? | 31% | 5% | 64% | -34 |
| ??? | 29% | 7% | 63% | -34 |
| ??? | 27% | 7% | 66% | -40 |
| ??? | 26% | 6% | 67% | -41 |
| ??? | 23% | 6% | 72% | -49 |
Care to take your best guess as to:
We, of course, know the results. And we can tell you that while we probably would have gotten question #4 correct, we wouldn't have done well on the others.
For now, we will say that we sat on this for a week, in hopes that we'd have some insight, and... we've got almost nothing. We will, however, point out that Biden is somewhere between "middle of the pack" and "slightly above average." This would seem to affirm our general argument that modern-day approval ratings are quite harsh, and are not comparable to approval ratings from other eras. It would also seem to affirm that Biden is not actually doing so badly, despite what his ratings, taken out of context, might suggest.
The full table, with the names included, is below. If any readers who have insight into the politics of these countries has thoughts on any one of these numbers (i.e., why a particular leader is popular, unpopular, or middle of the pack), please do send them in. If we get comments, we'll run some either tomorrow, or later this week. (Z)