If the 2012 election included France and Germany, President Barack Obama might be able to breathe a bit easier.
An overwhelming majority in those countries -- 92 percent and 89 percent, respectively -- would like to see Obama re-elected, according to a poll released Wednesday by the Pew Research Center, which surveyed people in 21 countries. More than two-thirds of those polled in Britain, Spain, Italy and the Czech Republic also supported his re-election.
Elsewhere in the world, most Brazilians and Japanese also approved of giving Obama a second term, as did pluralities of people in more than half of the countries surveyed. His popularity isn't international, however. A majority of those polled in several Middle Eastern countries, including Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan and Lebanon, oppose his re-election. And although confidence in the president remains high around much of the globe, approval for his foreign policy has dropped since his inauguration:
Many who were surveyed felt that the president hadn't lived up to expectations on issues such climate change and the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, and that he had failed to listen to other nations. There was especially marked opposition to drone strikes, which are supported in the United States, Britain and India but deeply unpopular in the other countries surveyed.
The Pew poll was conducted by a mix of live telephone and face-to-face interviews between March 17 and April 20, with methodology varying across the countries surveyed. Sample sizes ranged from 700 in Japan to 4,018 in India. Margins of error were between 3.3 percent and 5.2 percent, with the highest margins in Brazil and Turkey. In Pakistan, a number of areas were excluded from the survey because of instability or security risks; two populous Indian states, Kerala and Assam, were also excluded. According to Pew Research, the samples in some countries, such as India and Pakistan, were "disproportionately urban."