Just 1 percent of French want McCain to win vote: poll

By Francois Murphy

PARIS (Reuters) - Just one percent of French people want Republican candidate John McCain to win the U.S. presidential election, and western Europeans overwhelmingly favor his rival Barack Obama, an opinion poll showed on Friday.

McCain's campaign derided Obama as a celebrity akin to Paris Hilton after the Democratic nominee toured Europe and gave a speech to a huge crowd in Berlin this summer. The Harris Interactive survey suggested the Republican would have struggled to draw such a large audience there if he had tried to.

When asked which man they wanted to see elected, 78 percent of respondents in France backed Obama, compared with just one percent for McCain and five percent who said they wanted neither to win, the poll for television news channel France 24 found.

The rest were undecided.

In Germany, where Obama held his rally, five percent of people supported McCain while 72 percent backed Obama.

"The five largest European countries are unanimous in their desire to see Barack Obama elected whilst John McCain's rating is extremely low," the pollsters said in a note summarizing their survey of 6,276 adults in Spain, Italy, Britain, France and Germany, as well as the United States.

Republican President George W. Bush clashed with then French President Jacques Chirac over the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, and Berlin also opposed the war.

But even in countries that took part in the conflict, there was little appetite for another Republican administration.

In Britain, where the Labour government was Washington's closest ally, 11 percent of respondents said they wanted McCain to win the November 4 election, compared with 48 percent who favored Obama.

Italian conservative Silvio Berlusconi, who sent troops to Iraq, is back in power as prime minister, but only 12 percent of those polled supported McCain while 66 percent of respondents backed Obama.

Spaniards also favored Obama by a margin of 68 percent to McCain's eight percent.

When asked to choose from a list of reasons why they favored Obama, the top pick in France, Germany and Spain was "his capacity for change from the Bush administration's policies." The British preferred "the values he represents" and Italians opted for "his youth."

The answer most frequently chosen in France, Germany and Italy for disliking McCain was "his policies." Spanish respondents most strongly opposed "the values he represents" and the British cited "his choice for vice president."

But foreigners will not get to determine the next U.S. president, and the poll gave Obama a 10-point lead in the United States, a similar margin to other recent surveys.

Of the 1,064 Americans polled, 42 percent said they supported the Democrat, compared with 32 percent in favor of McCain. Eight percent said they were not sure whom they supported, and 18 percent said they backed neither candidate.

(Editing by Caroline Drees)