Perspectives from Brazil, Germany, Poland, Israel, and India
PRL conducts quarterly surveys on democratic attitudes in five countries in addition to the US: Brazil, Germany, Poland, Israel, and India. This report includes data from the October 2024 and January 2025 waves of the survey.
Global respondents did not expect Trump to win, and they were not optimistic about their country’s relationship with the US if he was elected.
In all of the countries less than 50% of respondents predicted that Donald Trump would win. The highest prediction was 45% in Germany, closely followed by 43% in Poland, and the lowest was 31% in Israel.
We then randomized the winner of the election and asked respondents if they thought economic, military, trade, and overall relationship between their country and the US would improve or worsen under the winner.
Only Israel expressed more optimism about the state of policies under Donald Trump as compared to Kamala Harris.
Countries in which respondents were more likely to think Trump would win expected the effect of a Trump win to be worse. The responses to the influence questions varied across countries:
- Germany and Poland: Many respondents believed a Trump victory would lead to worse outcomes across multiple areas.
- Brazil: A similar, though slightly weaker, negative trend emerged.
- India: No significant differences in perceptions of Trump versus Harris.
- Israel: Respondents expected improvements in all categories under Trump.
The majority of global respondents do not differentiate between economic and military outcomes. With the exception of Poland respondents did not think there was a significant difference between economic and military relations.
These results suggest that people in other countries assess U.S. candidates partly based on their perceived stance toward their own country, rather than solely on policy specifics.
In January 2025, we re-asked these relationship questions with Trump as the election winner.
With the exception of Poland, countries in which positive feelings were already expressed became even more optimistic, and countries with negative feelings became less optimistic.
Economic optimism slightly increased following the election, while national security optimism declined.
While U.S. voters often focus on domestic issues when choosing a president, the global perspective is important. Foreign perceptions of U.S. leadership can influence international relations, trade partnerships, and diplomatic ties.
These perceptions appear to be shaped more by broad political impressions than detailed policy analysis. How other countries perceive the U.S. plays into diplomatic relationships and the ability to influence global outcomes through positive relationships rather than force.
PRL publishes the core data on democratic attitudes from our global surveys on our Global Political Pulse Dashboard.