Global survey shows widespread disapproval of Covid response

People in most of 25 countries around the world think governments and leaders failed to respond either well or fast enough to the coronavirus crisis, a new global survey shows.

YouGov’s globalism survey of about 26,000 people in countries from Australia to Sweden, designed with the Guardian and carried out by the YouGov-Cambridge Globalism Project between July and August, before the second wave hit in Europe and elsewhere, showed striking variations in approval for governments’ handling of the pandemic, which has killed nearly 1.1 million people.

A record four in five respondents in Denmark, which locked down very early in March as the first wave hit and has managed to limit Covid deaths to 119 per million inhabitants, thought their government had done very or fairly well.

Australia and Greece, with death tolls per million of just 35 and 51, also recorded approval levels higher than 70%, while 67% of respondents in Germany – with a death rate the same as Denmark’s – said they thought Angela Merkel’s government had handled the crisis very or fairly well.

Countries survey

At the other end of the scale, only 34% of people surveyed in the US, 36% in Spain, 37% in France and 39% in the UK and Brazil thought their governments had performed well. Death tolls in these countries are among the highest in the world: 686 per million in the US, 735 in Spain, 521 in France, 649 in the UK and 730 in Brazil.

There were significant anomalies, however. Fully 58% of respondents in Italy and 54% in Sweden – both of which have also suffered very high death rates, of 676 and 586 per million – were nonetheless confident that their governments had handled the pandemic very or fairly well.

In Italy, analysts say, that may be partly explained by the remarkable personal popularity of Giuseppe Conte, whom polls show to be the most trusted Italian politician in years: 61% of respondents approved of the prime minister’s Covid performance.

In Sweden, separate YouGov polling suggests 65% of people have a favourable opinion of the chief epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell, the architect of the country’s light-touch, anti-lockdown strategy, while 69% said they were very or fairly confident in the national health agency.