U.S. President Donald Trump’s attacks on world leaders have given a lot of them a lift of their approval rankings, as allies contend with what experts say is an “external threat” posed by the Trump administration.
Leaders who were suffering polling slumps in recent months and years — including outgoing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his incumbent Liberal Party, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy — have seen their popularity rebound since Trump returned to the White House in January, in line with recent polls.
“Donald Trump is making other countries rally around their leaders in opposition,” said Matthew Lebo, a political science professor at Western University.
“He’s having the other effect of what he seems to want, which is to undermine people like Trudeau and Zelenskyy.”
Although Zelenskyy has long enjoyed support from a majority of Ukrainians, his approval rating has fallen since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, from over 80 per cent at the moment to 60 per cent last November, in line with Gallup. Other polls conducted in early 2025 put Zelenskyy below 60 per cent.
Trump has appeared to stop that slide.
A poll released last week by the Kyiv International Institute for Sociology showed between Feb. 14 and March 3 — a time period that saw Trump call Zelenskyy a “dictator” and culminated within the disastrous Oval Office meeting between the 2 leaders — Zelenskyy’s trustworthiness amongst Ukrainians rose from 57 per cent to 67 per cent.
One other poll of European leaders by the Ukrainian Rating Group showed an analogous jump for Zelenskyy in late February.
That very same poll found the very best jumps in approval rankings since last 12 months were for French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who’ve recently sought to take leadership roles in supporting Ukraine.
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Each Macron and Starmer are relatively unpopular at home, but have seen small boosts in opinion polls as they cope with Trump in polls released last week. An Ifop survey for Ouest-France saw Macron’s popularity climb to seven points over the past month to 31 per cent, while Starmer’s net approval rose 10 points to minus 23 in a brand new Opinium poll for the Observer.
Meanwhile, Trump’s tariffs and threats of annexing Canada because the 51st U.S. state have similarly boosted Trudeau and the Liberals’ fortunes.
An Ipsos poll conducted last month for Global News — before Liberals elected Mark Carney to interchange Trudeau as leader — put the Liberals barely ahead of the Conservatives for the primary time since 2021. Trudeau’s own approval rankings have jumped from a historic low of twenty-two per cent to 34 per cent last month as he prepares to depart his post, in line with Angus Reid.
Trump’s tariff threats have also led popular Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum to her highest approval rating ever, in line with a El Financiero poll last week: a staggering 85 per cent.
“There’s what we call a ‘rally across the flag’ bumps in approval rankings that generally occur at times of national threat or crisis … in solidarity or as an act of patriotism against an external threat,” Lebo said.
He said recent examples included the surge of former U.S. president George W. Bush’s approval rating after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, and his father George H.W. Bush’s own popularity bump through the Gulf War of the Nineties — much different external threats than the one Trump poses.
One party that has not yet seen a polling bump amid Trump’s attacks has been the Democratic Party within the U.S.
A Quinnipiac poll last month found the opposition party in Congress is at an all-time low with just 21 per cent support, in comparison with a record-high 40 per cent approval for Republicans.
Will Trump move voters back toward incumbents?
Trump was one in all many world leaders who won elections last 12 months on a wave of resentment against incumbents by voters who desired change. Starmer was one other, while Macron and the ruling parties of South Korea and Japan saw their parliamentary majorities and coalitions crumble.
While Germans still voted for a brand new government in February’s elections — delivering historic blows to ousted chancellor Olaf Scholz’s party and boosting the far-right Alternative for Germany — fear and anger over Trump helped Ontario Premier Doug Ford cruise to re-election just days later.
It stays to be seen if other incumbents can repeat Ford’s success. That can be the large test for Carney, who vowed Sunday night after winning the Liberal leadership to tackle Trump as prime minister.
Darrell Bricker, CEO of Ipsos Public Affairs, said polling shows that’s where Carney comes out ahead for voters versus his economic bonafides and policy record.
“Donald Trump has develop into the centre of the universe, not only for Americans, but for global residents,” he said in an interview.
“His effect on the world environment goes to have an effect on what people consider their very own domestic political situation.”
That can include reassessing politicians who share Trump’s populist rhetoric, Bricker added, now that voters have seen Trump in motion.
In his victory speech Sunday, Carney said Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre “worships on the altar of Donald Trump” and would “kneel before him, not arise to him” if elected prime minister.
Although Poilievre was ranked one of the best leader to cope with Trump in an Ipsos survey last month, with 28 per cent saying so, an excellent larger number — 31 per cent — said the Tory leader would “roll over and accept whatever President Trump demands.”
Poilievre has echoed a few of Trump’s stances on issues like cutting public service jobs and government spending, but has not adopted others like a crackdown on immigration.
“The problem comes all the way down to, do you would like a politician who acts and feels like Trump in an election campaign to manipulate the best way that Donald Trump is now governing,” Bricker said.
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