Gallup Poll Shows Arab Approval of U.S. Rising
Ahead of the President's speech in Cairo this week, Gallup has released a poll showing that approval of American leadership has risen in 8 Arab countries since Obama took office. Overall, the approval ratings are very low, with disapproval rates outweighing them by over 50 points in the case of Yemen, Syria, Lebanon and the Palestinian Territories. But still, most are improving. Tunisia saw the biggest increase, rising 23 points to 37% approval, followed by Algeria (up 22 points to 47% approval) and then Egypt (up 19 points to 25% approval). Polls in both Lebanon and the Palestinian Territories returned a drop in approval ratings. Interestingly though, there was not a corresponding rise in disapproval ratings. Rather, the percentage of people answering "don't know" increased significantly, perhaps indicating that many people are uncertain of Obama's intentions in the Middle East. Read the results here.
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Katie Connolly joined NEWSWEEK in June 2007, working for NEWSWEEK's international editions. In September 2007, she was assigned to cover Republican presidential candidates for Newsweek's special election issue and book. For this project, Katie was detached from the weekly magazine and her reporting was embargoed until after election day. As a result, she gained exclusive, behind-the-scenes access to the McCain campaign.
Now based in DC, Katie was named Political Correspondent in November 2008 and covers the White House and Capitol Hill.
Katie received her Master of Public Policy from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, where she was the 2005 Menzies Scholar. She received her Bachelor of Arts from the University of Queensland and completed her honors thesis on media representations of the East Timor conflict at the University of Melbourne. She was born and raised in Brisbane, Australia.
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