Morning Consult Counter/Consensus: Global Political Risk Briefing, May 2, 2024

1. Soft Power Competition in Europe (Consensus)

Xi’s not all that (yet). Chinese President Xi Jinping heads to Europe this week for a series of diplomatic visits, with stops anticipated in France, Hungary and Serbia. As the media has noted, Xi hopes to leverage the visit to “drive a wedge” between Europe and the United States.

As far as public opinion is concerned, our data suggests there is substantially more work to be done. Among Western Europe’s major economic and political players — France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom — average net favorability toward the United States has consistently exceeded net favorability toward China by a wide margin since we began tracking views of the two countries several years ago.

China hardly fares better when disaggregating views by country: In all five European markets we examine, views of the United States have been consistently positive on a net basis since the previous U.S. electoral cycle (though worsening sentiment in Germany over the past several months is worth noting), while views of China have remained net-negative. Nor is there a single market where the gap between views of the two countries is relatively close. 

Despite the unfavorable circumstances for Beijing, the U.S. elections may nevertheless produce the wedge that Xi is looking for. Many have noted that America would be on the outs in Western European capitals — and presumably among their constituents — if a second Trump presidency materializes for 2025. Our data suggests it’s a valid inference. As seen in the leftmost portion of the charts below, Europeans’ goodwill toward America — which we assess here on a 7-day rolling basis to put more of the temporal variability in public sentiment on display relative to the above 30-day average charts — increased markedly following President Biden’s inauguration in January 2021; by contrast, in the twilight of the Trump presidency, Europeans’ goodwill was substantially lower, and their views of America and China were much more similar. Trump’s promises of 10% tariffs on U.S. allies and familiar comments threatening to withdraw from NATO make it likely a second term would take relations back to similarly fraught territory.

Xi’s visit should be viewed against this backdrop. While Beijing’s near-term charm offensive is unlikely to dramatically shift the needle when it comes to Europeans’ views of China, our view is that it doesn’t necessarily have to. Simply holding European sentiment toward China steady could be sufficient to degrade American soft power in the region and give Beijing a leg up if former President Trump returns to office.

2. South Africa (Consensus)

ANC you later? Since the fall of the apartheid system 30 years ago, South Africa’s ruling African National Congress (ANC) has been able to form every government without coalition partners. The May 29 elections are likely to change that.  

Per our daily surveys, which target the online population, President Cyril Ramaphosa spent much of the last two years of his tenure in deeply negative approval rating territory, and public views of South Africa’s overall country trajectory are even more negative. 

An ANC result of less than 50% will require the ruling party to form a coalition, a number that will be hard to reach at a time when many South Africans blame the ANC for ills ranging from crime to unemployment. In the last two months, we’ve seen the share of South African adults in our daily surveys who say the ANC is the party closest to their own views slide below 30%, with the opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) at 23%, making it increasingly likely that coalition building is in the offing. Former President and ANC leader Jacob Zuma’s new offshoot party, Spear of the Nation (MK), is meanwhile embroiled in accusations that it forged signatures on its registration documents. The young party and its popular leader may still be disqualified from standing in the elections in the coming weeks, which would give the ANC a better chance at clinching victory. 

Coalitions at the local and regional level between major parties in South Africa have not been particularly stable in recent years, creating fears of an extended and potentially unstable government formation process. Given the shifting dynamics we observe when it comes to support for the ANC, we tend to agree, and advise planning for such an outcome after May 29.

3. Global Corporate Activism (Counter)

Mind the culture gap. Erstwhile U.S. senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously said that the central conservative truth is that culture, not politics, determines the success of a society, but that the central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture. Our recent analysis of global corporate activism — examining how consumers' political leanings interact with their desire for corporate action on hot-button social issues like LGBTQ+ rights, corporate unionization, gay marriage and abortion access — suggests politics can mediate culture, but does so inconsistently. 

Per that analysis, some issues exhibit larger gaps between right- and left-wing views on corporate activism than others. The United States — the world’s largest consumer market — has the largest average gap of any country, followed closely by highly polarized Brazil. Consumers in Mexico, South Africa, Nigeria and to a lesser extent India all show more limited variation in their views as a function of political ideology. In short, where you sit globally can determine where you stand.

On average, some topics are nevertheless more divisive than others. By issue, support for racial equality is the least politically divisive across the countries where we track public sentiment on social issues, whereas transgender rights is the most.

But issue divisiveness can itself be highly market-specific. For example, political divides in consumers’ views on corporate activism around unionization are particularly visible in Brazil and Argentina, where labor movements have come to be seen as a creature of the left. Support for abortion access, meanwhile, is not clearly associated with political ideology in Germany, Italy or Japan, but certainly is in the United States. 

Companies operating across international markets will seek to tailor their stances on hot-button issues in each market as a function of their local consumer bases, particularly amid 2024’s unprecedented global election cycle where a variety of social issues will be on the ballot. Recent experience shows this will be difficult amid multiple global crises and high and growing consumer awareness about companies’ behavior overseas.

Companies seeking to ground their communication strategies empirically, as well as political analysts monitoring risks linked to ideological polarization around sociopolitical issues, can download our granular data on the topic via our newly expanded Global Corporate Purpose Tracker (Morning Consult Pro+ subscription required).