Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden substantially leads incumbent President Donald Trump as the Arab world's preferred candidate in the November 3 US presidential candidate, an opinion poll indicated Sunday, according to AFP.
Out of 3,097 people polled across 18 Middle East and North African countries, around 39 percent favored Biden while only 12 percent opted for Trump, the survey carried out by British pollster YouGov and commissioned by Saudi daily Arab News found.
"When asked which candidate would be better for the Arab World if elected president, most believe that neither candidate (49 percent) would fulfil such a description, yet Biden is still considered a better option to Trump," the survey said.
Trump is widely seen as the preferred candidate among a slew of Arab governments, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates which are arch rivals of Iran. Trump pulled out of the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers and has since imposed several rounds of crippling sanctions on Iran.
Public opinion, however, is different as reflected in Sunday’s poll.
"If the Arab world were choosing the next president, Biden would win by a landslide," YouGov's chief Stephan Shakespeare told AFP.
"But that's partly because they don't know much about Biden -- only half say they have heard of them, while nearly everyone has heard of Trump," he added.
Should Biden win, some 58 percent of Arabs said he "must distance himself from the Obama administration policies."
Trump won some support in the poll for leaving the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, but only 17 percent of Arabs felt his stance made the region safer.
The poll suggested Trump's 2017 decision to move the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem proved overwhelmingly unpopular, with 89 percent of Arabs opposing it.
The results of the poll appear to be in line with the Palestinian Authority’s view of Trump and his policies on Israel, which have raised the ire of the PA.
The PA has been boycotting the Trump administration ever since the 2017 recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
It also rejected the Trump administration’s Middle East peace plan, with PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas stating that the plan would be relegated to the "dustbin of history."
In recent weeks it has also condemned the US-brokered normalization agreements between Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan.