Last month we highlighted a Reuters poll [8] which showed that when it comes to who Americans perceive as a threat to the country, President Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin are neck and neck with 20% of respondents indicating they view Putin as an imminent threat versus 18% for Obama. Of course it wasn’t all bad: far more Americans still see ISIS as a bigger threat than the President.
Against this backdrop we present the results of the TIME 100 reader’s poll in which readers pick the 100 most influential people on the planet. As far as our readers are concerned, it will come as no surprise who topped the list [9].
Russian President Vladimir Putin is the winner of this year’s TIME 100 reader’s poll.
Putin edged out rapper-singer CL (of the South Korean girl-group 2NE1) to claim the number one spot with 6.95% of the votes in the final tally. Pop stars Lady Gaga, Rihanna and Taylor Swift rounded out the top five with 2.6%, 1.9% and 1.8% of the votes, respectively.
The TIME 100 is an annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world, spanning politics, entertainment, business, technology, science, religion and other fields. Chosen by the editors of TIME, this year’s list will be unveiled April 16. Voting for the reader’s poll closed April 10.
Besides Putin, the only non-entertainers to crack the top 10 were the Dalai Lama (1.7%), Malala Yousafzai (1.6%) and Pope Francis. (1.5%). Barack and Michelle Obama sat just outside the top 10 with 1.4% and 1.2% of the votes, respectively.
More than half of the votes — 57.38% — were cast within the United States. Canada and the United Kingdom followed with 5.54% and 4.55% respectively.
As you can see, President Obama received only 1.4% of the vote (even as ~60% of respondents were American) which wasn’t enough to land him in the top 10 alongside the following folks who US citizens apparently feel are far more influential than the man occupying The White House: Beyonce, Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga, and Emma Watson. Meanwhile, America’s maybe next President is a distant thirty-second way behind Jimmy Fallon and just one spot above Chris Pratt (who helped kill [10] Osama Bin Laden).
[11]
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So congrats to the “isolated” Mr. Putin who we imagine is, like us, only left with one question after seeing the results: “who is CL of 2NE1?”
