Survey: Hungarian opinions rank the world's top three political leaders

Daily News Hungary
Wed, 01 Feb 2017 00:00 UTC

© Voz de América

The majority of Hungarians support Hungary building balanced and mutually beneficial relations with Russia, a survey released by the Századvég Foundation on Wednesday shows.

A total of 75 percent favoured pragmatic relations with Russia as opposed to only five percent saying that "Hungary should not even talk to Russian President Vladimir Putin at all," the survey revealed. Eighteen percent of respondents supported building friendly relations with Russia.

The survey also gauged Hungarians' opinion about the world's top three political leaders, namely Russian President Vladimir Putin, newly inaugurated US President Donald Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Most popular among them was Putin, favoured by 35 percent of respondents, compared with 44 percent rejecting him.

Trump came in second, with 27 percent seeing him in a positive light and 38 percent viewing him unfavourably. Fully 34 percent of respondents were unable to give an opinion.

Least popular was Merkel, with only 26 percent viewing her favourably. The phone survey was carried out on Jan. 21-28 with a sample of 1,000 people.