Most Poles believe US is no longer a reliable ally, finds new poll

Feb 2, 2026 | Defence, Politics, Society

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Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and is published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

Just over half of Poles believe that the United States is no longer a reliable ally, while less than a third think that it is, according to a new poll.

It follows a number of other recent surveys indicating that Poles, who are normally one of the most pro-American European nations, have significantly more negative perceptions of the US since Donald Trump returned to the White House a year ago.

The new findings come from a poll by the SW Research agency for Rzeczpospolita, a leading daily newspaper, published on Saturday.

They asked: “Do you regard today’s US as a reliable ally of Poland?” A narrow majority, 53.2%, answered “no”, while 29.9% said “yes” and the remaining 16.9% said they had no opinion.

A positive answer was more likely among men (34.5%) than women (25.4%), among those aged under 25 (40.6%) than over 50 (29.5%), and among those with the lowest level of education (33.1%) than the highest (27.6%).

 

Another poll, conducted by the IBP agency for website Portal Obronny and published today, asked: “How do you assess Donald Trump’s international and security policies in the first year of his presidency?”

Again, a majority (58%) assessed them negatively, while only 23% had a positive view and 19% expressed no opinion.

Jakub Graca, an analyst at the Institute of New Europe, a Warsaw-based think tank, told Portal Obronny that the results are not surprising given that “Trump, with his words and actions, is undermining the existing order, which is beneficial for Poland as a ‘middleweight’ player on the international stage”.

An international study by the Pew Research Center published last June showed that views of the US in Poland and many other countries had collapsed under Trump.

Only 35% of Poles said they had confidence in the US president to do the right thing regarding world affairs, down from 75% a year earlier, when Joe Biden was in office. That 40-percentage-point decline was the third-largest recorded by Pew among all countries it surveyed.

Another poll in September by United Surveys for the Wirtualna Polska news website found that just over half of Poles (51%) believed that Trump is not a guarantor of Poland’s security, while only 39% thought that he is.

However, the findings did show a significant split between supporters of the right-wing government, 54% of whom believe that Trump is a guarantor of security, and the more liberal government, among whom only 15% think so.

Government figures have in the past often criticised Trump, and Prime Minister Donald Tusk last month joined the leaders of the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Denmark in calling for the US to respect Danish sovereignty over Greenland.

By contrast, President Karol Nawrocki, who is aligned with the right-wing opposition, is a close Trump ally who has regularly praised the actions and rhetoric of the US president.

Other recent polls, taken amid the crisis over Greenland and anger in Poland over Trump’s claim that NATO allies have not offered “frontline” support to the US, have also found negative views prevailing.

In a survey by IBP for newspaper Super Express published last week, 45% of Poles said they believe that the US under Trump’s leadership is no longer a “friend of Poland”. Only 37% believe that it is.

“This is another poll confirming a decline in positive ratings for Donald Trump among Poles,” Bartłomiej Biskup, a political scientist at the University of Warsaw, told Super Express.

“His statements regarding Greenland and attempts to impose tariffs on Germany are controversial, and his comment about allies fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan was received particularly negatively in Poland,” he added.

Another poll by state research agency CBOS for Dziennik Gazeta Prawna asked Poles how they assess Trump’s foreign policy from the perspective of Poland’s national security. Again, a majority (58%) viewed it negatively while only 32% were positive.

However, an international poll conducted last month by Eurobazooka for France’s Le Grand Continent showed that Poles remain less negative towards Trump than many other Europeans.

Among the seven countries surveyed, Poland (28%) had the lowest proportion of people who regard Trump as an “enemy of Europe” and the highest proportion who regard him as a “friend” (17%).

In all other countries, a majority of respondents said they view Trump as an enemy: 58% in Spain and Denmark, 56% in Belgium, 55% in France, 53% in Germany and 52% in Italy.


Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

Main image credit: Grzegorz Jakubowski/KPRP

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