“He’ll be good for you, but it’s not that we’d vote for his sort here, you understand…”

The Telegraph:

Senator Barack Obama emerged as Europe’s favourite candidate for America’s presidency today when a poll conducted for Telegraph.co.uk gave him 52 per cent support across five of the world’s richest nations, including Britain.

John McCain, the presumed Republican nominee, received only 15 per cent of the vote in unprecedented survey covering Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Russia…

Considering the global media drooling over Sen Obama (which has even reached Rupert Murdoch), it is almost amazing that Sen McCain did even that well. In any event, while fun to chew over, “polls” like this are essentially irrevelant and laughable. For not only is the methodology usually at best questionable (the people being asked for their opinions often have little substantive idea of what they are talking about, hence the large number of “don’t knows” from those willing to be honest), but in this case this “poll” is even sillier than most others like it.

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YouGov / Daily Telegraph Survey Results
Sample Size: 6256
Fieldwork: 27th – 29th May 2008
		European Nation
Daily Telegraph	Total	Britain	France	Italy	Germany	Russia
Total	6256	2241	1005	1004	1005	1001
% of population	100	14.76	14.94	14.44	20.38	35.49
	%	%	%	%	%	%
Do you think that the United States is overall a force for good or force for evil in today’s world?
Force for good	27	33	28	49	25	16
Force for evil	43	35	40	27	39	56
Don’t know	30	32	32	24	36	28
The United States will elect a new President later this year. If you had a vote and the two main candidates are Senator John McCain and Barack Obama, which would you support?
Barack Obama	52	49	65	70	67	31
John McCain	15	14	8	15	6	24
Neither	18	13	14	7	17	28
Don’t know	15	24	13	8	10	17
Irrespective of who you would support to be President, who do you think would be better equipped to lead the world economy out of its current difficulties: John McCain or Barack Obama?
Barack Obama	42	37	51	59	52	28
John McCain	22	17	11	20	12	36
Neither	16	13	17	8	21	19
Don’t know	19	34	21	13	15	17

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Why is it “sillier”? First of all, on that 52-15 split (and the last question also), notice this: the survey requests a definitive, either/or answer and yet still manages to include a “neither”? A “don’t know” is acceptable for those who beg off the question, but why do respondents have the right to a “neither”? Obama or McCain is the choice.

So, ask them to choose. Yet some couldn’t even do that, and that’s bad enough. But more telling would seem to be that unsaid, but which we all well-know: how that “majority” supposedly supporting Sen Obama would in all likelihood never dream of choosing someone like him as a national leader for their own countries.

Who needs to “expand” their horizons? As Sen Obama’s serious run itself demonstrates, it’s not Americans. In short, when the son of a Kenyan Muslim immigrant is in line to become the next head of government and chief of state combined for any European country, this blog will then give a nod to the validity of such people’s prescriptive suggestions on “the correct” leader for the U.S. But not before.