Google Earth: Voice of the People Poll

Users of Google Earth can view a series of overlays showing the 'approval ratings' of the EU and other world powers in the 52 countries surveyed in the Voice of the People Poll.

Approval ratings were calculated on the basis of the balance of respondents who would like to see a the global influence of a power increase over the respondents who would like to see a power's influence decrease. Here is a worked example:

According to the Poll results, in South Korea, 35 per cent of respondents wanted an increase in the EU's global influence while 19 per cent wanted a decrease. The remaining respondents were either don't knows/refused (22 per cent) or thought that EU power should remain about the same (24 per cent). From these figures, the EU can be said to have an approval rating of 16 per cent (i.e. 35 - 19).

Only positive approval ratings are shown in these maps (countries where there is a negative approval rating appear in white). For each map, the darker the colour, the higher the support for a greater global infuence for the power in question.

  View EU approval map

View US approval map

View Russia approval map 

View China approval map

View India approval map

  View Brazil approval map

  View South Africa approval map

View Iran approval map

There are also two disapproval maps, showing a darker shade for the higher level of disapproval (i.e. the higher balance of respondents wanting a decrease in the influence of the power concerned):

View US disapproval map

View Iran disapproval map

Notes:

1. The KMZ files work experimentally in Google Maps, but they tend to be slow to load in this format. To open in Google Maps simply cut and paste the URL of the relevant KMZ file into the search bar of the Google Maps webpage.

2. The maps were generated using Ricardo Sgrillo's powerful (and free) software GE Graph.