Today's Guardian had a piece about this - Still no votes in Leipzig by Jonathan Freedland - and included a mention of a poll recently carried out in various European countries by Harris Interactive (HI Europe) which indicates that Bush would be lucky to keep his deposit if he had to depend on our votes over here. (I know candidates in the USA don't actually have deposits they forfeit if they score a derisory vote - it's an expression, because that's how it works here in UK parliamentary elections).

Anyway, here is a link to the HI Europe site, with the figures from that poll. So, overall, Bush scores 9%, and Kerry gets 56%, when people were asked who they would vote for. And when it comes to predicting the result, 62% thought Kerry would win, and only 16% thought it would be Bush.

Still, as Jonathan Freedland put it in his article "You would think those numbers would hurt Bush, making clear how unpopular he is in the world. But they don't. If anything they hurt Kerry, suggesting he is the candidate of limp-wristed foreigners and therefore somehow less American." And that is in spite of a Declaration of Independence that put great store by "decent respect to the opinions of mankind".