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Confidence in world leadersConfidence in world leaders
About the author
Natasha Kassam
Natasha Kassam was Director of the Lowy Institute's Public Opinion and Foreign Policy Program from 2019 to 2022, directing the annual Lowy Institute Poll and researching China’s politics, Taiwan, and Australia-China relations.
The continuing decline in Australians’ trust of China corresponds with record low levels of confidence in China’s President Xi Jinping. Only 10% of Australians say they have ‘some’ or ‘a lot’ of confidence in President Xi to ‘do the right thing regarding world affairs’. This is less than half the confidence that Australians expressed in President Xi in 2020 (22%) and has fallen 33 points since 2018.
In 2020, then-President Donald Trump inspired confidence in only slightly more Australians than President Xi (30% confident in Trump vs 22% in Xi). However, US President Joe Biden receives far higher marks from the Australian public. Seven in ten Australians (69%) express confidence in him to do the right thing regarding world affairs. This is a striking 39 points higher than Australians’ confidence in former President Trump in 2020.
New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern tops the list of global leaders again, with 91% expressing confidence in her (up 4 points from 2020). This aligns with New Zealand’s retention of its traditional place at the top of the annual ‘feelings thermometer’, ranking again as the country about which Australians feel most warmly. Australians also hold high levels of confidence in German Chancellor Angela Merkel, with 67% saying they have some or a lot of confidence in her.
The majority of Australians are confident that both Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Opposition leader Anthony Albanese will do the right thing regarding world affairs, although Albanese falls 11 points behind Morrison on this measure. Seven in ten Australians (67%) express confidence in Morrison, a 7-point increase from 2020. The number who are confident in Albanese is steady this year at 56%.
Unsurprisingly, there are significant partisan divides on this question, although a majority of both Coalition-leaning and Labor-leaning Australians of voting age are confident in Morrison (95% Coalition and 56% Labor). In contrast, 74% of Labor-leaning Australians have confidence in Albanese, compared to 44% of Coalition-leaning Australians.
Australians’ lack of familiarity with regional leaders has been a persistent feature in Lowy Institute polling over the years. A significant proportion of Australians have responded in 2021 that they ‘do not know who the person is’ for several key leaders in our region. Close to one in five Australians say they do not know of Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Indonesian President Joko Widodo.
Six in ten Australians (61%) have confidence in Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, 12 points lower than for his predecessor Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in 2020, possibly reflecting the recency of Suga’s tenure and Australians’ unfamiliarity with him as Japan’s leader. (Prime Minister Suga was elected in September 2020, and 15% of Australians say they do not know of him.) More than half (59%) say they have confidence in UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, 4 points higher than in 2020.
Although trust in India increased significantly in 2021, only four in ten Australians (38%) express confidence in Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to do the right thing regarding world affairs. Similarly, although Australians’ trust in Indonesia has improved in the past year, only a quarter of Australians (26%) say they have confidence in Indonesian President Joko Widodo.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un continue to elicit very negative opinion among Australians. Only 16% of Australians say they have a lot or some confidence in President Putin. Almost no Australians (5%) say they have confidence in North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un. Kim Jong-un is the only world leader on the list in 2021 who receives fewer votes of confidence than China’s President Xi Jinping.
