On the eve of President Obama's trip to Indonesia, Pew Research offers up some research on the country's view of the U.S. Indonesia and Lebanon are outliers in that they are Muslim-majority countries with a positive outlook toward the United States:
A 2002 poll by the Pew Research Center's Global Attitudes Project found that roughly six-in-ten Indonesians (61%) had a favorable view of the U.S., while only 36% expressed an unfavorable view.With the onset of the Iraq war, however, ratings for the U.S. turned sharply negative. In a 2003 Pew Global Attitudes survey taken shortly after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, only 15% of Indonesians had a positive view, while 83% voiced a negative opinion. America's image rebounded somewhat in response to U.S. relief efforts following the December 2004 tsunami. A Pew Research survey in April-May 2005 found the percentage of Indonesians with a favorable opinion of the U.S. had risen to 38%.
It was not until the election of Barack Obama, however, that positive ratings for the U.S. returned to their pre-Iraq war level. A Pew Research survey conducted in May-June of 2009 found a dramatic improvement in America's overall image -- the percentage of Indonesians with a favorable opinion jumped from 37% in 2008 to 63% in 2009, while the percentage with an unfavorable view dropped from 53% to 30%.
The U.S. received especially high marks from young Indonesians -- 69% of those ages 18-29 expressed a positive view of the U.S., compared with smaller majorities of those ages 30-49 (60%) and over 50 (57%).
