US President Obama and Emir of Kuwait
US President Obama and Emir of KuwaitIsrael news photo: The White House

President Barack Obama would win a landslide victory if elections were held today – but outside the United States, according to polls.

Republican candidate Mitt Romney is viewed in a favorable light by only five percent of those asked in Britain, France and Germany, according to a recent poll cited by Voice of America.   

“Obama has consistently been seen, as most Democrats are, as more closely aligned with the politics, with the policies, the opinions, and the views of Europeans, than Romney,” YouGov market research official Joe Twyman told VOA. United States citizens themselves are not necessarily particularly aligned with the views of Europeans.

He noted that “everyone wants to be friends with Obama while he is in office "because European leaders can have an easier dialogue with the American president when the country’s citizens like him.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel probably would prefer that Obama continue as president, the Washington Post suggested this week, even though her center-right coalition government is more in line with views of the American Republican party.

One German newspaper poll reported that 82 percent of Germans expect Obama to win the election, despite polls in the United States showing that he is barely neck-and-neck with Romney, if not falling behind.

One journalist said this week during a press briefing in Washington on foreign policy, “I know in India, they like, they love President Obama and the – Secretary Hillary Clinton. They can – if they run in India, they will win election anywhere in India."

In the Middle East, most people outside of Israel have little interest in the elections, particularly because of spreading unrest, but also because of a general distrust of any American president. In Israel, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is presumed to be anxious for Obama to become one-term president.

BBC reported that the only country in European and the Near East to back Romney was none other than Pakistan, but neither he nor Obama won more than 20 percent backing of the respondents.