Most citizens in other countries see tomorrow’s U.S. election as important for the world at large, not least because of its influence on economic markets around the world. For that reason, we recently conducted polls in seven key countries. Across the map, we found overwhelming support for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in the upcoming election. The exception is hardly surprising: Russia.
On Oct. 26 and 27, we sampled 500 respondents in each of seven countries, using each country’s dominant language. These countries were Australia/New Zealand (combined), United Kingdom, Canada, France, Mexico, Germany and Russia. The poll is a random sample from Pollfish’s panels, which are created by embedding Pollfish’s polling tool in a large swath of mobile applications in each country. The results have been weighted to be representative in terms of age and gender.
We asked respondents whom they would vote for if they were eligible to vote and who they expected would win. The graph below shows whom respondents would vote for, computed as a percent of the major-party vote and, therefore, excluding third-party candidates.
Clinton wins in nearly every country. A whopping 97 percent of Mexican respondents said they would vote for Clinton. Large majorities in nearly every other country also supported Clinton. The exception was Russia, where 23 percent supported Clinton and 77 percent supported Trump.
To put these results in context: In 2012, 93 percent of Washington residents voted for Obama. Obama’s next highest state-level vote share (72 percent) was in Hawaii, where he lived for years. Republican Mitt Romney’s widest state-level margin came from Utah (75 percent). Basically, the support for Clinton in foreign countries rivals that in the most strongly Democratic states in the United States.
But regardless of support, most people thought Clinton would win. Even in Russia, 43 percent thought Clinton would beat Trump. In all other countries, 75 percent or more thought Clinton would win.
Russian support for Trump should not be surprising, given his deep respect for Russian President Vladimir Putin and the alleged Russian hacking of the emails of the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign. Notably, support for Trump is high even among Russians who reported voting against Putin: 67 percent supported Trump.
Outside of Russia, we found meaningful support for Trump mainly among far-right voters. In Germany, 93 and 97 percent of supporters of the center-left SPD and center-right CDU back Clinton. Among supporters of the national-populist AFD, 70 percent would vote for Clinton, which is a lower number but still a substantial majority.
In the U.K., 85 percent of center-left Labourites and 75 percent of center-right Conservatives supported Clinton. But 67 percent of supporters of the far-right UKIP would vote for Trump. This should not be surprising as UKIP leader Nigel Farage came to the Republican National Convention to support Trump.
Tobias Konitzer is a PhD candidate in communication at Stanford University. Find him on Twitter @KonitzerTobias. Sam Corbett-Davies is a PhD candidate at Stanford University in computer science. Find him on Twitter @scorbettdavies. David Rothschild is an economist at Microsoft Research. Find him on Twitter @DavMicRot.