Popularity of European Leaders
Under the shadow of the crisis, it is an hard task being an European leader: in all the major European countries the popularity rating of governments has been systematically below 50% all year long. Still, some leaders appears “more equal” than the others.
Monthly popularity of leaders and trend (spline approximation)
Italian prime minister Mario Monti, for example, is able to record an average positive rating of 44% among his own citizens, far above all the other leaders. Second the Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy (with a 36% positive rating), while the German Chancellor Angela Merkel, albeit obtaining a rasonable score of 34%, shows a small but constant decline over the year. Much worst the situation for David Cameron (32%) and the new French President François Hollande (27%). The analysis of Voices from the Blogs, together with Crimson Hexagon, is based on more than 6 millions of tweets posted in the last 12 months.
Interesting to observe how the volume of tweets is conditioned on political events. For examples, the profile of the Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy shows spikes around the electoral campaign (he was elected on Dec 2011) but also in early summer 2012 when the Spain government faced the possibility to be rescued by the European partners’ intervention.
Similarly for President Hollande: his popularity descreased after the election and increased again, mostly due to the green party supporters, for his declarations stopping the practice of fracking for the extraction of shale gas and the anticipated closing of nuclear plant of Fessenheim.
