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PARIS - EUROPEANS, particularly the French and Germans, overwhelmingly want Mr Barack Obama to win the US presidential vote next month, an opinion poll said on Friday.
Only a tiny minority would vote for the Republican contender John McCain, said the survey carried out by the Harris Interactive polling institute in Europe's five biggest countries.
Seventy-eight per cent of French people interviewed, 72 per cent of Germans, 68 per cent of the Spanish, 66 per cent of Italians and 48 per cent of Britons said they would plump for the Democrat Obama on November 4.
Mr McCain would take only one per cent of the French vote, five per cent in Germany and eleven per cent in Britain, said a poll commissioned by France 24 television news channel and the International Herald Tribune newspaper.
'The principal reasons given for this marked preference for the Democratic candidate are his personality, the values that he represents and his capacity for change from current American policy,' said France 24 in a statement.
'In Europe, finding a positive outcome in Iraq and Afghanistan remains the most important priority,' it said.
The other election issues that stood out in all the countries surveyed by Harris, which questioned 6,000 people via e-mail, were the economic situation in the United States and global warming.
Across all the populations surveyed, Mr Obama was considered to be the most competent to deal with these issues as well as the most apt for promoting better relations with Europe.
But Mr McCain was perceived as more credible on security questions and on terrorism. In all six countries, a majority of respondents said they thought that having a black US president would have a positive effect on the country.
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