Singapore — According to the latest YouGov poll, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has moved up four spots from last year to become the fourth most admired man in Singapore.

He is the only Singaporean on the list of most admired men, and President Halimah Yacob, who made the list for the first time and is ranked seventh, is the only Singaporean to make the list of most admired women.

The results of the poll, which was published on Sept 25, are from open-ended nominations gathered from January to March 2020 from panellists across 42 countries and territories all over the world.

The panellists had to answer the following question: “Thinking about people alive in the world today, which [man or woman] do you most admire?”

The top 20 men and women who received the most nominations and were nominated in at least four countries were compiled, with 5 to 10 popular local figures added for each country.

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And from May to September, YouGov said, fieldwork was conducted to poll the 42 areas to ask “who do you truly admire?”, where respondents could make multiple selections, and “who do you MOST admire?”, where they could only pick one.

In Singapore, former US President Barack Obama topped the list for the third consecutive year, followed by Bill Gates, global philanthropist and co-founder of Microsoft, in second place. Billionaires Jack Ma and Warren Buffet flank PM Lee in third and fifth places respectively.

For Singapore’s most admired women for 2020, Michelle Obama, former US First Lady, took the top spot, followed by the United Kingdom’s Queen Elizabeth II, American talk show host Oprah Winfrey in third place, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern in fourth place and actress and humanitarian Angelina Jolie in fifth.

The top 10 list for women is occupied with many political leaders, with Aung San Suu Kyi, the State Counsellor of Myanmar, in sixth place, President Halimah in seventh place, Angela Merkel, the Chancellor of Germany, in eighth place, followed by two US celebrities — pop and country singer Taylor Swift and comedienne and talk show host Ellen DeGeneres — in ninth and tenth places respectively.

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As for the men’s top 10, only one sports personality found his way into the most admired list in Singapore for this year. Hong Kong martial artist and actor Jackie Chan landed in sixth place, followed by US actor Keanu Reeves and China’s President Xi Jin Ping in seventh and eighth places respectively. The Dalai Lama took ninth spot and football superstar Cristiano Ronaldo landed the tenth place.

Mark Zuckerberg, David Beckham, Andy Lau and JJ Lin, who were all on the 2019 most admired men’s list, have all fallen out of Singapore’s top ten. Emma Watson, Hillary Clinton and Theresa May have all fallen off of this year’s list of most admired women in Singapore.

In the UK, English broadcaster and natural historian Sir David Frederick Attenborough took the top spot on the men’s list, while Queen Elizabeth was voted as most admired woman of 2020. Interestingly, the United States, Canada, Germany and France had the same results as Singapore, with Barack and Michelle Obama taking the top spots. /TISG

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