Most Europeans want Obama re-elected Most Europeans have a negative view of Mitt Romney, the US Republican presidential candidate, according to two wide-ranging opinion polls published on Wednesday, which also show that an overwhelming majority of people in Europe want Barack Obama re-elected in November. In a sign that enthusiasm for Mr Obama has diminished little in Europe over the past four years, an overwhelming majority of Europeans - some 75 per cent - said they would vote for the Democratic candidate if they could, according to the annual Transatlantic Trends survey by the German Marshal Fund of the US. By contrast, only 8 per cent of respondents said they would vote for Mr Romney, with as few as 2 per cent taking this view of the Republican candidate in France. The negative views of Mr Romney are also reflected in a poll for the You-Gov Cambridge Forum, an annual conference at Cambridge university, which shows that only one in 20 people in Britain, France and Germany has a positive view of the Republican presidential nominee. According to the YouGov poll, some 47 per cent of UK respondents say that a Romney victory would make them feel less favourable towards the US. Only 3 per cent say the election of the Republican would improve their view of the US. One factor that needs to be taken into account in both polls is that few Europeans have much of an idea who Mr Romney is. When respondents in the GMF poll were asked if they had a favourable or unfavourable view of Mr Romney, some 39 per cent said unfavourable but more than a third - 38 per cent - said they did not know what to think or refused to answer. However, while Mr Romney may be an unknown quantity outside the US, the Republican candidate also appeared to alienate people with a visit he made to Europe this summer, when he criticised Britain's Olympic preparations. Both polls are significant because of their survey size. GMF interviewed about 15,000 people in 15 countries while the YouGov-Cambridge survey covers 12,000 people in Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, Pakistan and China. The GMF Transatlantic Trends survey shows that 82 per cent of Europeans have a favourable view of Mr Obama, with only 11 per cent saying they disapproved of him. Enthusiasm for the president runs particularly high in France (93 per cent) Germany (91 per cent) and Sweden (90 per cent). It is lowest in Poland (54 per cent). Turkey's feelings towards Mr Obama are lukewarm (60 per cent) while only one in three Russians (36 per cent) thought favourably of Mr Obama. Elsewhere, the GMF Transatlantic Trends poll throws a spotlight on how the crisis over the eurozone has affected Europeans and Americans. Some 79 per cent of American citizens and 65 per cent of those in the EU said they had been personally affected by the economic crisis. The majority of EU respondents (61 per cent) considered membership of the EU to be a good thing for their countries" economies. However some 57 per cent said they thought the euro had been, or would be, a bad thing for third economies. When asked whether their country should leave the euro some 27 per cent of Spaniards and 26 per cent of Germans agreed. So, too, did, 21 peer cent of Italians and 20 per cent of Portuguese. In Britain, the poll shows that anti-European sentiment has been conspicuously on the rise. The number of British respondents with an unfavourable view of the EU rose 14 points over the past year to 49 per cent. Only 40 per cent of British respondents believed that EU membership was good for the domestic economy, with 52 per cent saying membership was bad. The UK was also more likely than most other EU member countries polled to see economic opportunities in China (56 per cent as opposed to an EU average of 42 per cent). However, 44 per cent of those polled saw China as a potential military threat (five points above the European average).