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Americans Get Behind Blair

October 1 2003

The American public will have been pleased to learn - if they heard the headline from his Conference speech yesterday - that Tony Blair has no reverse gear. British polls may be showing a loss of trust in the PM, but the latest Harris Poll shows that in the US he is extremely popular and widely trusted, while Britain is held to be by far the most influential of European states.

The Hutton enquiry and the failure to date to find weapons of mass destruction have left only a minority of the British public thinking that Blair can be trusted to tell the truth: in the USA however, only 8% say that he cannot generally be trusted, with 31% not sure how to answer this question and fully 61% believing that he can generally be trusted. Republicans are far more likely to trust him (81%) than Democrats (52%) or Independents (59%), suggesting that views of the war in Iraq are far more significant than his role as leader of the Labour Party. However, even democrats and independents are unlikely to come down against Blair, with only 10 and 12% respectively saying he cannot be trusted and a much larger proportion 'unsure'.

Two thirds of Americans also rate his performance as Prime Minister positive (66%, vs 15% negative and 19% not sure) and again two thirds (66%) think he is America's best friend of all foreign leaders, with only 4% disagreeing and 30% with no opinion.

When asked 'Which one of these European countries do you think has the most influence in the world?' Americans overwhelmingly choose Britain: fully 65% vs 7% for Germany, 5% for France and less than 1% for Italy. Twenty-two percent are not sure. However, only 36% think that Britain is more influential than it was 20 years ago (when Margaret Thatcher was prime minister), and 31% think that it is less influential.

The Harris Poll(r) was conducted online within the United States between September 16 and 23 among a nationwide cross section of 2,306 adults.


All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas unless otherwise stated.

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