The world loves Obama, except Jordan

We’ve all seen the myriad stories on how, outside the United States, a healthy chunk of the global public is rooting for Barack Obama to win the presidency. (Thomas Friedman provided the latest example this week).

Those stories tend to be anecdotal, so I was interested to see that the Pew Global Attitudes Project has some real numbers to bring to the conversation. Asked in which candidate they have more confidence, well-informed respondents in 22 countries plus the United States responded like so:

As you can see, the only country that prefers McCain, besides the United States, is Jordan. It’s interesting to note that the Jordan portion of the survey, conducted in face-to-face interviews from March 18 to April 6, was conducted well before Obama’s famous “undivided Jerusalem” comment. Jordan’s population is heavily Palestinian, so we can surmise that even before he made his AIPAC speech, he was already viewed with some suspicion in Arab countries.

But here’s a question for readers to weigh in on: What does Spain have against John McCain?