EMEA: Leader Approval & Country Trajectory Outlook, November 2023

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Egypt

Egyptians head to the polls Dec. 10-12. Incumbent President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi, who initially came to power after the 2013 Egyptian coup, is eligible to run for re-election due to 2019 constitutional amendments that extended his second term by two years and allowed him to seek a third, six-year term. El-Sissi’s main rival dropped out of the race last month, alleging government harassment. 

The elections will take place against the backdrop of a deepening economic crisis and mounting public dissatisfaction about it. The Egyptian pound lost around half its value last year, battered by external events like Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and government spending on unprofitable megaprojects. Food inflation in particular has hit the poorest households. Our data provides a clear picture of how things have changed: Starting in the summer of 2022, Egyptians’ views of both the overall direction of their country and el-Sissi’s job performance began to slide, with both metrics of political satisfaction falling over 20 percentage points by early this year. 

El-Sissi’s approval rating has seen a recent uptick beginning in early October, almost certainly stemming from political solidarity around support for Palestinians in the wake of Israeli retaliation following the Oct. 7 Hamas attack. Indeed, his government has been accused of staging pro-Palestinian protests as a form of political profiteering. While el-Sissi’s overall position looks increasingly fragile given underlying public dissatisfaction, the timing of both the ongoing political crackdown and his recent public opinion boost following the latest Israel-Hamas war will more than likely be enough to keep the lid on growing popular anger and hand the incumbent a token electoral victory. 

Israel

It is typical for leaders of countries at war to receive a sizable bump in public opinion thanks to the “rally around the flag” effect. Increasing optimism among Russian adults about their country’s trajectory following the invasion of Ukraine provides a stark recent example of this phenomenon. But Israelis seem unsure of whether to give Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the benefit of the doubt for his handling of events in the wake of Hamas’ horrifying Oct. 7 attacks on Israeli citizens. Their already sharply net negative news of Netanyahu’s job performance have shifted very little in recent weeks, if anything moving somewhat lower relative to the period just before the attacks. 

Israel’s politics were far from tranquil even prior to the terrorist attack, reflected in the public’s deeply negative views of its country’s trajectory. Netanyahu’s cabinet — which U.S. President Joe Biden called “extreme” — was pushing through controversial judicial reforms that sparked mass protests in the summer and early fall of this year. 

The fairly stable trend in Israeli views of Netanyahu does not mean public opinion has not shifted after the events of Oct. 7. Our data shows Israelis’ net favorability toward the United States shot up 20 points in the weeks following the attack (reaching a high of 81 points on Oct. 21), mirrored by even larger declines in views of some regional players, including Saudi Arabia, which saw a roughly 40 point drop. Besides casting very serious doubt on the ability of Israel and Saudi Arabia to normalize relations in the near future, the seismic movement in this and other data series makes consistently negative views of Israel’s overall trajectory and of Netanyahu’s performance even more telling. We see dark days ahead for Israel and for Netanyahu as the war continues.

Nigeria

The Nigerian presidential election on Feb. 25, 2023 saw Bola Tinubu, a former governor of Lagos State, win the election with 36.61% of the vote. Although Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission certified the result, several observers, including the European Union and a joint observer mission of the International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute, criticized the elections as being non-transparent. Tinubu’s short tenure has since been plagued by controversy, with his opponents calling for a repeat election and challenging the results in court. 

This short-lived honeymoon period can be seen in Nigerians’ views of Tinubu’s performance and their country’s trajectory, both of which declined sharply after the election and have hovered in negative territory ever since. The president’s appearance in court on July 17 in particular appears to have been an inflection point. His lawyer’s statement warning of “anarchy” if challenges to his tenure continued were widely interpreted as a threat of violence. With ongoing court challenges undermining faith in the electoral result, we see little prospect for Tinubu’s net approval rating, or indeed Nigerians’ deeply pessimistic views of their country’s trajectory, to rebound in the near term.

Methodology

Morning Consult conducts thousands of daily interviews on key political issues across 43 countries, making our unified data set on political attitudes — Morning Consult Political Intelligence — the largest globally. Every day, we gauge public opinion on world leaders, international organizations, policy issues and other countries to provide customers with data at the scale and speed needed to navigate the changing global political landscape in real time. Daily historical data is available for up to 6 years. For more information on average daily sample sizes, target populations, and more, see our MCPI methodology primer here.