Foreign Polls Favor Kerry

Tom Fenton, in his fourth decade with CBS News, has been the network's Senior European Correspondent since 1979. He comments on international events from his "Listening Post" in London, and other parts of the world as well.

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Of all the polls that have been released recently, there is one that is so lopsided it makes this Presidential campaign look like a one-horse race.

Senator Kerry would win by a huge margin if the people questioned in this poll could vote in November. But of course they can't because the poll was carried out in 35 other countries around the world. The survey, reported in London's Financial Times, was carried out by the public opinion group Globescan, in conjunction with the University of Maryland. The results are stunning. In 30 of these countries, the public prefers Senator Kerry over President Bush by a two-to-one-margin.

Only three countries preferred Bush - Poland, Nigeria and the Philippines. In two others, India and Thailand, the public was split 50-50. But in Western Europe, America's traditional allies, only 10 per cent of Germans backed Bush. In France, it was 5 per cent. I cannot recall any other American Presidential election where world opinion was so one-sided.

Just what has convinced most of the world's population to jump on the ABB (Anyone But Bush) bandwagon? Ivor Daalder, a foreign policy expert at the Brookings Institution, says it's "the natural outcome of the kind of foreign policies the president has pursued. He deliberately and willfully ignored taking into account the perspectives and interests of other countries."

Most observers think the overwhelming preference for Kerry is primarily a reaction to the American invasion and occupation of Iraq. Another poll, of the United States and 10 European countries, seems to confirm this. Transatlantic Trends 2004, carried out by the German Marshall Fund of the US and an Italian think tank, shows the sharp division between Americans and Europeans on the use of force. Fifty-four percent of Americans think the use of force is the best way to ensure peace. Only 28 percent of Europeans agree.

The Marshall Fund reports that for the first time since it started the polls, a majority of Europeans does not want strong American leadership in world affairs.

William Drozdiak, director of the fund, says "a lot of Europeans have begun to fear that at a time when they have created a Europe that is safe, secure, strong and free for the first time in history, they will be dragged into a misbegotten war abroad."

That is precisely the way many Americans felt about Europe prior to World War II.

There are two things to remember about these polls. First, the fact that most French, Germans, Brazilians, Kazakhs and all the rest prefer Kerry to Bush will not necessarily help the senator to win.

And, secondly, as an American expatriate living in Moscow wrote to the editor of the Financial Times:

"Thankfully, my one vote is worth more than all the bluster, agitation and dismay these 3.5 billion would-be Kerry voters can muster."


By Tom Fenton