NATO's Image Rising

Pew Research Center this week just released a very interesting poll that shows that in both the North America and Europe, views of NATO have improved the past year.  this is a bit of a surprise given hostile comments by then Candidate Trump about NATO, and the rise of nationalism in Europe.  My best guess is that rising concerns about Russia account for the increased support of the NATO alliance.  Notably, however, support of NATO by Republicans actually decreased during the past year.  Pew offered this analysis:

In both North America and Europe, views of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) have generally improved over the past year. Today, roughly six-in-ten Americans hold a favorable opinion of the security alliance, up from just over half in 2016, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. Majority support for NATO has also strengthened in Canada, Germany, the Netherlands and Poland. And after a steep decline a year ago, most French again express a favorable view of the security alliance.

 .  .  .

Behind the overall uptick in favorable views of NATO, there are sharp political and partisan differences in how publics in member countries perceive the alliance. In the U.S., for instance, liberals (81%) are much more supportive of NATO than conservatives (48%). In fact, American liberals’ opinions of the alliance have improved 23 percentage points since 2016. Conservatives’ views are unchanged.

 In several European countries, those on the ideological right are more likely than those on the left to support the alliance. In Spain, the right and left are 27 percentage points apart – 59% vs. 32% respectively. In Sweden the ideological gap is 26 points, in France 14 points, and in Germany 13 points. The share of the French right with positive views of NATO has grown 14 points in just the past year, while the opinion among the German right is up 13 points over the same period.

Read it all here.   The partisan U.S. numbers are especially interesting, and do reflect the 2016 election: