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Jair Bolsonaro, the least popular of 13 world leaders

2 mins read
November 8, 2021

Brazilians are the most critical population of their national leader. Narendra Modi is the most popular among 13 world leaders. The French President Emmanuel Macron was the most unpopular one of all for several continuous months.

Jair Bolsonaro
Jair Bolsonaro the current most unpopular head of state among 13 world leaders

According to a data intelligence company, the president of Brazil is the most unpopular of 13 world leaders among their own citizens.

As of November 2, the president of Brazil Jair Bolsonaro has a net approval rating of ‑23% in his country, where 59% disapprove and 35% approve his actions.

Brazil President’s unpopularity is followed by Pedro Sánchez, Prime Minister of Spain, and Emmanuel Macron, President of France, with ‑20% and ‑19% respectively.

The management of the Covid-19 pandemic in Brazil highly criticized

The opinion of Brazilians of Jair Bolsonaro used to be overall positive until April 2020, which coincides with the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, for which his handling of the crisis has been highly criticized. Brazil has the second highest Covid-19 death toll.

However, in March 2021, Bolsonaro had regained in popularity with almost as many favorable opinions (46%) as unfavorable ones (47%). But the gap has been increasing since then.

Last October, a Brazilian Senate committee recommended he faced a series of criminal indictment in regards to the pandemic. Earlier in the month, several thousands Brazilians went down the streets to ask for his impeachment.

Through its Global Leader Approval Rating Tracker, the company Morning Consulting tracks every week the approval rating of state executive leaders from 13 countries: Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, South Korea, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

The polls are based on online interviews among nationally representative samples made up of between 1,000 and 40,000 adults.

Through 2020, the French president was almost continuously the most unpopular of the 10 world leaders still in power today. He suffered from a net approval rating around ‑40% in the first quarter of 2020.

Despite an improvement from March 2020 (-22% on March 24), he was only as unpopular as the Spanish prime minister in November 2020. He never enjoyed a positive net approval rating since August 2019 and the start of the polls from the company.

Popularity of Brazil, France and US leaders
The popularity in net approval ratings of the leaders of Brazil (green), France (blue) and the United States (pink) from January 2020 to November 2021 | © Global Leader Approval Rating Tracker, Morning Consulting, Nov 4, 2021

Narendra Modi highly popular among literate Indians

The evolution of the opinion clearly follows the popularity of decisions one head of state may take, and especially those regarding the Covid-19 pandemic which pulled much of the attention in the last two years.

In April 2020, Boris Johnson, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, saw a spike in popularity when he didn’t want the country to go into a lock down (66% of favorable opinions in April 13, 2020). But it quickly dropped as the country was harshly hit by the pandemic. Overall, the British PM always had a negative net approval since then.

Similarly, the opinions of Australians on their prime minister, Scott Morrison, completely changed compared to April 2020. More than 60% of the population used to approve his politics from April last year to February 2021. But his popularity steadily eroded until having as many detractors as supporters at the moment.

On the opposite side, Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, is the most popular head of state among its population with a net approval rating of 46%. Since August 2019, he was always credited of more than 60% of favorable opinions in the consulting company’s polls. In India, the sample of 2,000 adults is only representative of the literate population, the company specifies.

The Indian PM, who uses Internet access as a political tool, is followed by the Mexican President, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, with a net approval rate of 41%.

In the United States, Joe Biden’s popularity really started to decrease in August 2021 when the U.S. troops left Afghanistan to the Talibans in a hurry. The opinion of Americans, based of a sample of 40,000 adults, became negative since then.

Read more about Brazil

Source:

  • Global Leader Approval Rating Tracker, Morning Tracker, November 2021, Free access
  • Clément Vérité

    Clément is the executive editor and founder of Newsendip. He started in the media industry as a freelance reporter at 16 for a local French newspaper after school and has never left it. He later worked for seven years at The New York Times, notably as a data analyst. He holds a Master of Management in France and a Master of Arts in the United Kingdom in International Marketing & Communications Strategy. He has lived in France, the United Kingdom, and Italy.