Donald Trump as President? The rest of the world takes a decidedly dim view

The dim view of Trump may have been spurred by his promise to turn away all Muslims from America's borders

(Getty)

A new global poll shows that Donald Trump is not exactly inspiring confidence among voters in other countries whereas the reviews for Hillary Clinton are entirely more favourable.

The survey, conducted by the Pew Research Centre in 15 different nations, shows that only in China are people at least half way convinced that Mr Trump would be a sensible steward of foreign affairs in the event that he is elected President of the United States in November.

In nearly half of the countries, however, his foreign policy approval numbers are only in the single digits. And in 11 countries very large majorities considered him a poor choice to lead the world’s greatest superpower.

Domestically, by contrast, a new poll from Quinnipiac University released on Wednesday, saw Mr Trump running roughly neck and neck with Ms Clinton nationally. The poll, which offers far more encouraging news for the Republican compared to others released in recent days, shows him taking 40 per cent of the vote compared to 42 per cent for Ms Clinton.

In the Pew survey, views of him were most harsh in Sweden, where 92 per cent of respondents viewed him negatively, while in Germany and Japan the numbers were 89 per cent and 82 per cent respectively.

The dismal view of Mr Trump was also in evidence in Britain and France, each suggesting that 85 per cent of its citizenry does not view him as a leader capable of leading the world.

Political affiliation made a difference in how people viewed the presumptive nominee. The survey, taken before the EU referendum, found that 30 percent of Britons who identified with the United Kingdom Independence Party, UKIP, said they had at least some confidence in him, compared with 12 percent of the British population as a whole.

(Pew Research Center (Pew Research Center)

The poll was released one day after Mr Trump laid out a startlingly protectionist platform on trade policy that would see him tear up the Trans-Pacific Partnership that promises to lower trade barriers between the US and 11 other nations in the Americas and Asia and withdraw from Nafta, which ties the US with Canada and Mexico, unless its terms are radically renegotiated.

His stance represents a jarring break from the free-trading orthodoxy that has been pursued for decades by the Republican Party, which is preparing formally to nominate him as their presidential candidate at their convention in Cleveland in just three weeks.

Mr Trump has drawn global opprobrium for his responses to recent terror attacks, notably his pledge to ban all Muslims from entering the United States, even though there have been signs in recent days that he may have backed off that plan in favour of blocking immigration from countries that support terrorism. He hasn’t said which countries he has in mind.

Across the European countries surveyed, Ms Clinton won a 59 per cent approval rating for her ability to conduct world affairs - the figure for President Barack Obama was even higher at 77 per cent - compared to just 9 per cent for Mr Trump. She achieved similarly high marks in Canada, Australia and Japan.

If China seems more open Mr Trump, the support even there isn’t overwhelming. The Chinese who answered the survey were split between 40 percent who had no confidence in the New York mogul and 39 percent who had no opinion. As for Ms Clinton, 37 percent in China said they have confidence in her while 35 percent said they did not.

The countries surveyed by Pew were Canada, the US, Sweden, Germany, Netherlands, France, Britain, Spain, Greece, Italy, Poland, Hungary, Australia, Japan, China and India.