World Leader Ratings: Well-Known Villains?

Statista's survey of more than 1,000 U.S. adults for its Brand Profiler special Personalities and Celebrities shows that only a minority of Americans closely follow international politics and that they more most likely to remember those world leaders that they dislike. Despite his historically low approval score in the 30-percent range, U.S. President Joe Biden was the most popular in the survey that included 20 world leaders. In a separate question on U.S. politicians, Joe Biden's 35 percent likability score also made him the most popular national politician ahead of Donald Trump, who scored 33 percent.

After Biden, most Americans in the survey were familiar with Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping - two of the world leaders they liked least. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was as well known as Xi, but better liked. French President Emmanuel Macron, the fifth most-recognizable world leader out of 20, was already know just to a minority of Americans. However, almost a third of the people who know the French head of state also approved of him.

Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman was known to 44 percent of Americans but only liked by 9 percent. European leaders other than Macron were at most known to a third of Americans. Among them, new Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni had already gathered a comparably high recognizability and likability score, while German chancellor Olaf Scholz, in office since 2021, was among the lesser-known European leaders.