American Opinions of Allies Remain Positive, Opinions of Rivals Fall Further

Key Findings

• Respondents were asked: Please rate your feelings toward some countries and peoples, with one hundred meaning a very warm, favorable feeling, zero meaning a very cold, unfavorable feeling, and fifty meaning not particularly warm or cold.
• Americans’ mean favorability toward South Korea (60), India (55), and Japan (65) is largely stable since 2016, while favorability toward China (32) decreased by 12 points in that time.
• The mean favorability to Iran (25) stayed stable since 2016.
• North Korea’s favorability rating remains the lowest among the 16 countries included in the survey, with its mean score dropping from 23 in 2016 to 19 in 2020.
• US public opinion toward Russia (29) deteriorated even further in 2020, with a drop of 11 points from 2016 data (40).
• Both Canada (81) and Mexico (61) retain high favorability ratings. Canada’s favorability is the highest of any country included in the survey.

Methodology

This analysis is based on data from the 2020 Chicago Council Survey of the American public on foreign policy, a project of the Lester Crown Center on US Foreign Policy. The 2020 Chicago Council Survey was conducted July 2-19, 2020 by IPSOS using their large-scale nationwide online research panel, KnowledgePanel, among a weighted national sample of 2,111 adults, 18 years of age or older, living in all 50 US states and the District of Columbia. The margin of sampling error for the full sample is ±2.3 percentage points, including a design effect of 1.2056. The margin of error is higher for partisan subgroups or for partial-sample items.

Partisan identification is based on respondents’ answer to a standard partisan self-identification question: “Generally speaking, do you think of yourself as a Republican, a Democrat, an Independent, or what?”

The 2020 Chicago Council Survey is made possible by the generous support of the Crown family and the Korea Foundation.