GLOBSEC Trends: Slovakia: Obama more popular than Putin

GLOBSEC Policy Institute (formerly the Central European Policy Institute) carries out research, analytical and communication activities related to Russia‘s efforts to increase its influence in Europe, including the impact of strategic communication and propaganda aimed at changing the perception and attitudes of the general population in Central European countries.

Key findings:

• In Slovakia the most popular politician is the President Andrej Kiska (two thirds of Slovaks give him favourability rankings), he is closely followed by the current U.S. President Barack Obama (50%) and Hillary Clinton (50%).
• Russian President Vladimir Putin scored fourth, but more people see him unfavourably (51%) than favourably (43%).
• Hungary`s PM Viktor Orbán and the Czech President Miloš Zeman are seen as favourable only by 30% of Slovaks.
• German Chancellor Angela Merkel together with Donald Trump and R.T. Erdogan are given the lowest scores.
• A clear majority of Slovaks would vote for remaining of their country in the EU and NATO, just a marginal part would vote to „leave“.
• A majority of Slovaks (almost 60%) see NATO as essential for the country’s security and a half would want to help an attacked NATO ally.  

The main objective of the public opinion survey, conducted in September 2016[1], was to analyse opinions of the public in Slovakia on their views of political leaders, integration issues, and security.  On July 1st, Slovakia’s Presidency of the Council of the European Union started. This historically first Slovak EU Presidency has strengthened the presence of the EU agenda in the public’s eye. However, it has been influenced by the shadow of Brexit, migration crises and the resistance of the Visegrad Four countries to participate in the reallocation mechanisms for refugees and migrants coming to Europe. Other salient foreign policy issues at the time of the survey were the campaign for the U.S. presidential elections and the ongoing war in Syria as well as tension and fights in other Middle East countries.  Against the backdrop of these turbulent times we assessed views and attitudes of the public in Slovakia on the EU, NATO, selected political leaders and their country’s overall geopolitical orientation.

You can download the GLOBSEC Trends report on Slovakia here in pdf.

[1] The survey has been co-authored and conducted by the agency FOCUS on the representative sample of the Slovak population. The fieldwork was between September 8 and 14, 2016. Standardized interviews were carried out with 1 054 respondents, age 15+, in form of face-to-face interviews. The survey was financially supported by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and European Affairs of the Slovak Republic.