WASHINGTON: Indians won’t get to vote in the 2016 US presidential election, but they can hold a view. And they do, preferring Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump, says a new poll.
Clinton, in fact, beats Trump in 15 of the 16 countries polled by US-based Pew Research Center. The 16th country was the US, but results were not immediately available. Also, President Barack Obama remains popular with Indians, with 58% of 2,464 respondents saying they are confident he will “do the right thing regarding world affairs”.
Obama polled high in all other countries as well as at home, except in Greece. Clinton, Obama’s former secretary of state, did well in all the nations polled, beating Trump convincingly and comprehensively.
“Confidence in Clinton to handle world affairs is generally high. By comparison, few trust Trump to do the right thing when it comes to foreign policy,” a Pew report said on Wednesday.
In india, where the poll was conducted in face-to-face interviews between April 7 and May 24, 28% said they had confidence in Clinton “to do the right thing on world affairs”.
{{/usCountry}}In india, where the poll was conducted in face-to-face interviews between April 7 and May 24, 28% said they had confidence in Clinton “to do the right thing on world affairs”.
{{/usCountry}}Trump got the support of only 14%, half of Clinton’s. But interestingly, his no-confidence vote was also quite low — at 18%, while 67% of those polled offered no opinion.
Indians have known Clinton for a while now, as the first lady who visited India before her husband, and as secretary of state. Trump, who has two projects in India including Trump Tower in Mumbai, is known to have visited India only once in 2014.
His controversial remarks have intrigued Indians, many of whom are following the race more closely than before.
Indians by and large didn’t seem thrown off by the 2016 race, which was viewed negatively in some countries such as Australia (76%) andCanada(69%). Most Indians — 42% — said they had a positive view of the campaign (only 12% looked at it negatively), as did respondents in China and Japan.