Global popularity contest results are in

The new BBC World Poll of public opinion in 27 countries is out. Here are some highlights:

Israel has few friends in Europe. For the first time, the poll measured public opinion on Israel, and the results are hardly flattering: An average of 56 percent of those surveyed finds Israel’s influence to be mainly negative. It’s not surprising that people in Muslim-majority countries don’t like Israel. But in no European country surveyed does more than 20 percent of the population have a positive opinion of Israel’s influence. In only three countries polled—the U.S., Nigeria, and Kenya—does Israel find support among strong pluralities.

Europe doesn’t like Iran, either. Iranian influence is viewed most negatively in Europe, though it does garner comparatively strong support in Indonesia (50 percent) and Egypt (51 percent). Only a quarter of the Indian and Chinese populations see Tehran’s influence as positive.

Somebody likes North Korea? While North Korea is duly viewed as a negative influence by Europeans and North Americans, people in Muslim countries are far more positive about Pyongyang’s influence. About 40 percent of the Indonesian and Lebanese populations, for instance, rate it positively. Asian countries were also more sympathetic toward North Korean influence, with more than a quarter of the populations of both China and India seeing North Korean influence as a good thing.

The United States is as unpopular as ever. Overall, an average of 51 percent of the survey’s participants believes U.S. influence to be a bad thing. A higher percentage in Nigeria, Kenya, and the Phillipines views the United States in a positive light than in the United States itself. Notably, countries with the largest pluralities sympathetic to North Korea, Iran, and Venezuela tend to give the United States the lowest marks—suggesting that support for those countries reflects antipathy toward U.S. foreign policy more than it does, say, love of Dear Leader.