Young Latin Americans are unusually open to autocrats

I n the latest edition of Latinobarómetro, an international poll in Latin America, respondents were asked to rate their approval of 17 named leaders on a scale of one to ten. In 15 of the 17 countries surveyed, Nayib Bukele, El Salvador’s populist, autocratic president, got the highest score—on a list that included Pope Francis and Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president. Such broad international appeal has raised concern about the durability of liberal democracy in the region. Are Latin Americans outside El Salvador yearning for their own version of Mr Bukele? First conducted in 1995, Latinobarómetro is a leading source of region-wide data on Latin American public opinion. This year’s poll, the first since 2020, was released on July 20th. Perhaps the most heartening result is that support for outright dictators remains scant. The two least-popular leaders in the survey were Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela and Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, who have both banned political opponents and held po

I n the latest edition of Latinobarómetro, an international poll in Latin America, respondents were asked to rate their approval of 17 named leaders on a scale of one to ten. In 15 of the 17 countries surveyed, Nayib Bukele, El Salvador’s populist, autocratic president, got the highest score—on a list that included Pope Francis and Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president. Such broad international appeal has raised concern about the durability of liberal democracy in the region. Are Latin Americans outside El Salvador yearning for their own version of Mr Bukele? First conducted in 1995, Latinob