Milei’s popularity drops – how he ranks against other regional leaders

A new study assessing the popularity ratings of South American presidents has confirmed a trend measured by various polling firms in recent days: Javier Milei’s image continues to fall.

The “Rankings of South American Presidents,” conducted by CB Consultora, headed by Cristián Buttié, shows Milei’s rating dipped over four points month-on-month.

The poll sample was gathered from Brazil, Colombia, Argentina, Peru, Venezuela, Chile, Ecuador, Bolivia, Paraguay and Uruguay following the CB Cawi Research (online interview) method on 12,444 respondents over 18 (between 1,045 and 1,462 people per country), between September 17 and 21.

According to the poll, the top three presidents are: Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula Da Silva, with a 51.8 percent positive image, Ecuador’s Daniel Noboa, who came in second at 51.5 percent, and Paraguay’s Santiago Peña, who garnered 50.2 percent support, in third place.

Uruguay’s Luis Lacalle Pou (49.6 percent positive) and Bolivia’s Luis Arce (47.1 percent), came in behind them to complete the “Top Best” heads of State, that is, the “green” section of ranking approval.

Already in the "Top Worst” comes Milei, given a 46.4 percent positive image, thus being the chief executive who experienced the greatest fall in his assessment from the month of August (when he had 50.6 percent), or a drop of 4.2 points. 

Going down

Argentina’s President had topped the rankings in June, when he reached 55.7 percent support, although ever since he started going down.

By July Milei was still in first position with 52.1 percent in favour and in August he fell to fourth position with 50.6 percent approval and 46.2 percent disapproval. In all, his positive image dropped by 9.3 points between June and September.

The report also indicates that the president who grew the most compared to the last assessment was Santiago Peña, who increased 2.9 percent from CB’s prior poll.

On the other hand, the heads of state who fared the worst this month were Peru’s Dina Boluarte in last place with a 27.8 percent positive image, Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro at 28.9 percent and Chile’s Gabriel Boric with 34.2 percent approval. Meantime Colombian Gustavo Petro received 35.7 percent support.

In the breakdown by countries, Milei recorded – within his 46.4-percent positive image – 26.2 percent as “Very Good" and 20.2 percent as “Good” while within his 50.4 percent disapproval he was rejected by 31.1 percent as “Very Bad” and by 19.3 percent as "Bad" with 3.2 percent recorded as "Don’t Know/Don’t Answer.”

– TIMES/PERFIL