US slips to fifth in ‘best country’ list

U.S. News and World Report released its new annual Best Countries ranking, revealing that the U.S. dropped a spot Wednesday.

The U.S. moved from fourth to fifth place in the rankings from 2022 to 2023. Switzerland again topped the rankings, followed by Canada, which moved up a spot, Sweden, which jumped two spots and Australia, which jumped three. 

The fall of the U.S. in the rankings is the first time in years the country has done so since 2018. The U.S. climbed the rankings from 2019 to 2022, possibly due to more popularity for current President Joe Biden and his policies versus Donald Trump’s across the world, according to Richard Wike, director of global attitudes research at the Pew Research Center.

“Biden is more popular than Trump in nearly all of the countries we survey, and there’s been more support for his policies,” Wike told U.S. News and World Report in a statement in an article on the unveiling of the rankings. “As a result, people are more likely now to say they have a favorable opinion of the U.S. overall.”

The ranking is the result of a survey of more than 17,000 people from March 17 to June 12 across the globe, according to U.S. News and World Report. 

“Each country was scored on each of the 73 country attributes based on a collection of individual survey responses,” an article on the methodology of the ranking read. “The more a country was perceived to exemplify a certain characteristic in relation to the average, the higher that country’s attribute score, and vice versa. These scores were transformed into a scale that could be compared across the board.”