Who are the most popular presidents in Europe?

Who are the most popular presidents in Europe?
By Euronews
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After Ilham Aliyev triumphed in Azerbaijan’s presidential election this week, we looked at how his winning 86.1% vote share compared with the rest of Europe.

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On paper, at least, he’s one of the most popular presidents in Europe.

Ilham Aliyev triumphed in Azerbaijan’s election this week after winning a 86.1% share of the vote.

But it comes with a huge caveat: the election was boycotted by the opposition and criticised for being held in an environment of curtailed rights and freedoms.

His landslide victory prompted Euronews to look at how his winning margin compared with other heads of state around the region.

We only looked at presidents elected by the people.

We excluded those chosen by MPs and other elected representatives, such is the process in Hungary, Italy and Germany.

We also left out countries with monarchies as their heads of state — such as the UK, the Netherlands and Denmark — and Bosnia and Herzegovina, because of the complexity of its system.

Kazakhstan's Nursultan Nazarbayev came out top of our analysis with a huge 97.8% vote share, followed by Azerbaijan’s Aliyev, Belarus’ Alexander Lukashenko and Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe criticised Kazakhstan's 2015 presidential election, saying it lacked credible opposition and there was numerous indications of ballot box stuffing.

OSCE also published concerns about the polls in AzerbaijanRussia and Belarus.

France’s Emmanuel Macron came fifth after winning a 66.1% of the vote in the country’s presidential election last year.

But this rather skews the picture because Macron only got this score in the second round of voting.

He got 24.01% in the first round.

France, like many other countries, has a list of candidates compete against each other in the first round of presidential elections.

If the winning candidate doesn’t get a vote share of more than 50%, there is a run-off between the most popular politicians.

Which presidents were elected with the biggest share of the vote?

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