Narendra Modi's global rating highest among 13 world leaders, but takes a hit since re-election

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s global approval rating has fallen to 66 percent, down from a previous 75 percent, a survey suggested. However, it is still higher than world leaders from 13 countries, including the Joe Biden of United States, Vladimir Putin of Russia, Emmanuel Macron from France and Germany’s Angela Merkel. The survey ‘Global Leader Approval Rating Tracker’, was conducted by an American data intelligence firm Morning Consult, which tracks approval rating from world leaders frrom 13 countries – Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, South Korea, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States – on a weekly basis. The tracker last updated on 17 June, showed 66 percent approval for Modi while 28 percent disapproved for him. This is an improvement from a 32 percent disapproval rating on 10 May 2021 when India’s second wave of coronavirus was at its peak and the government was largely blamed for worsening it by going ahead with elections in five states and allowing religious congregations. Notably, the prime minister’s approval rating was as high as 84 percent on 2-3 May, 2020, months after the COVID-19 pandemic started. It was at 82 percent in August 2019, three months after his reelection as India’s prime minister. The survey, however, had a sample size of only 2,126 adults in India, a country of 1.3 billion people. The firm mentioned that the daily global survey data is based on a seven-day moving average of all adults in a given country with a +/- 1-3 percent margin of error. All survey interviews were conducted online, which means that India’s responding population was only representative of the literate population that has access to digital media. The second position was bagged by Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi (65 percent), followed by Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (63 percent), Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison (54 percent), German Chancellor Angela Merkel (53 percent), US President Joe Biden (53 percent), Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (48%), UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson (44 percent), South Korean President Moon Jae-In (37 percent), Spanish Spain Pedro Sánchez (36 percent), Brazilian President Jaire Bolsonaro (35 percent), French President Emmanuel Macron (35 percent) and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga (29 percent).