U.S. President Donald Trump’s attacks on world leaders have given many of them a boost in their approval ratings, 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, according to 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 opposite 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 that time to 60 per cent last November, according to 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 in the disastrous Oval Office meeting between the two leaders — Zelenskyy’s trustworthiness among Ukrainians rose from 57 per cent to 67 per cent.
Another poll of European leaders by the Ukrainian Rating Group showed a similar jump for Zelenskyy in late February.
That same poll found the highest jumps in approval ratings since last year were for French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who have recently sought to take leadership roles in supporting Ukraine.
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Both Macron and Starmer are relatively unpopular at home, but have seen small boosts in opinion polls as they deal 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 new Opinium poll for the Observer.
Meanwhile, Trump’s tariffs and threats of annexing Canada as 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 replace Trudeau as leader — put the Liberals slightly ahead of the Conservatives for the first time since 2021. Trudeau’s own approval ratings have jumped from a historic low of 22 per cent to 34 per cent last month as he prepares to leave his post, according to Angus Reid.
Trump’s tariff threats have also led popular Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum to her highest approval rating ever, according to a El Financiero poll last week: a staggering 85 per cent.
“There’s what we call a ‘rally around the flag’ bumps in approval ratings that generally happen 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 during the Gulf War of the 1990s — 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 in 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, compared to a record-high 40 per cent approval for Republicans.
Will Trump move voters back toward incumbents?
Trump was one of many world leaders who won elections last year on a wave of resentment against incumbents by voters who desired change. Starmer was another, while Macron and the ruling parties of South Korea and Japan saw their parliamentary majorities and coalitions crumble.
While Germans still voted for a 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 remains to be seen if other incumbents can repeat Ford’s success. That will be the big test for Carney, who vowed Sunday night after winning the Liberal leadership to take on Trump as prime minister.
Darrell Bricker, CEO of Ipsos Public Affairs, said polling shows that’s where Carney comes out ahead for voters as opposed to his economic bonafides and policy record.
“Donald Trump has become the centre of the universe, not just for Americans, but for global citizens,” he said in an interview.
“His effect on the world environment is going to have an impact on what people think of their own domestic political situation.”
That will include reassessing politicians who share Trump’s populist rhetoric, Bricker added, now that voters have seen Trump in action.
In his victory speech Sunday, Carney said Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre “worships at the altar of Donald Trump” and would “kneel before him, not stand up to him” if elected prime minister.
Although Poilievre was ranked the best leader to deal with Trump in an Ipsos survey last month, with 28 per cent saying so, an even larger number — 31 per cent — said the Tory leader would “roll over and accept whatever President Trump demands.”
Poilievre has echoed some 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 issue comes down to, do you want a politician who acts and sounds like Trump in an election campaign to govern the way that Donald Trump is now governing,” Bricker said.
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