Should World Leaders Skip the Olympics?

A new Financial Times / Harris Poll finds that a majority of adults in Germany (55%) and France (54%) believe their leaders, Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy, should not attend the opening ceremonies of the Olympics in China this summer. In addition, pluralities in Italy (48%), Japan (45%), the United States (43%), and Great Britain (43%) as well as 39 percent of adults in Spain also believe their country’s leader should skip this year’s Opening Olympic ceremonies.

Additional results from the Financial Times/Harris Poll conducted online by Harris Interactive^® among a total of 8,748 adults (aged 16-64) within France, Germany, Great Britain, Spain, and the United States, adults (aged 18-64) in Italy and Japan, and adults (aged 18-60) in China between 30 April and 14 May 2008 include:

• More than three-quarters of adults in France (84%) and half the adults in Germany (51%) say they have heard a lot about the recent global protests surrounding the freeing of Tibet from Chinese rule;
• Pluralities in China itself (46%), Great Britain (44%) and the United States (41%) have also heard a lot about these protests;
• At least three in five adults in Italy (60%), Japan (66%), and Spain (68%) have heard at least a little about the protests;
• Three-quarters of adults in Italy (75%) and Germany (74%), two-thirds of adults in Japan (69%), France (67%) and Spain (64%) and a majority of adults in the United States (59%) and Great Britain (53%) all believe Tibet should not be under Chinese rule.

One of the issues surrounding all of these concerns is human rights as part of a foreign policy strategy:

• Very strong majorities in the five European countries, the United States and Japan (between 56% in Japan and 85% in Italy) believe that human rights should be a central figure of their country’s foreign policy;
• Interestingly, a plurality of Chinese adults (45%) believe human rights should be a central part of China’s foreign policy compared to 38 percent who say that it should not be a central feature of their foreign policy.

"How much would you support or oppose the attendance of [Nicolas Sarkozy, Silvio Berlusconi, Jose Luis Zapatero, Angela Merkel, Gordon Brown, George Bush, Yasuo Fukuda] at the opening of the Olympic Games in China in 2008?"

Base: All EU adults in five countries, Japanese and US adults

Note: Percentages may not add up to 100% due to rounding

"How much, if anything, have you heard about the recent global protests surrounding the freeing of Tibet from Chinese rule?"

Base: All EU adults in five countries, Chinese, Japanese, and US adults

Note: Percentages may not add up to 100% due to rounding

"Some people want Tibet to be a sovereign nation not under Chinese rule, while others believe that Tibet is a natural region of China and should remain under Chinese rule. What do you think?"

Base: All EU adults in five countries, Japanese, Chinese, and US adults

Note: Percentages may not add up to 100% due to rounding

"In your opinion, should human rights be a central figure of {France’s, Italy’s, Spain’s, Germany’s, the UK’s, the U.S.’s, Japan’s, China’s] foreign policy?"

Base: All EU adults in five countries, Japanese, Chinese, and US adults

Note: Percentages may not add up to 100% due to rounding

This FT/Harris Poll was conducted online by Harris Interactive among a total of 8748 adults (aged 16-64) within France (1,288), Germany (1,106), Great Britain (1,088), Spain (1,120), and the United States (1,046), adults (aged 18-64) in Italy (1,087) and Japan (1,002) and adults (aged 18-60) in China (1,011) between 30 April and 14 May 2008. Figures for age, sex, education, region and Internet usage were weighted where necessary to bring them into line with their actual proportions in the population. Propensity score weighting was used to adjust for respondents’ propensity to be online.

All sample surveys and polls, whether or not they use probability sampling, are subject to multiple sources of error which are most often not possible to quantify or estimate, including sampling error, coverage error, error associated with nonresponse, error associated with question wording and response options, and post-survey weighting and adjustments. Therefore, Harris Interactive avoids the words "margin of error" as they are misleading. All that can be calculated are different possible sampling errors with different probabilities for pure, unweighted, random samples with 100% response rates. These are only theoretical because no published polls come close to this ideal.

Respondents for this survey were selected from among those who have agreed to participate in Harris Interactive surveys. The data have been weighted to reflect the composition of the adult populations of the respective countries. Because the sample is based on those who agreed to participate in the Harris Interactive panel, no estimates of theoretical sampling error can be calculated.

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Q1300, 1305, 1310, 1315