Poll: List of world’s most admired men and women

Michelle Obama tops as the most admired woman

Entrepreneurs, politicians and footballers’ produced most of the people admired in 2019, a new YouGov survey indicates.

The 2019 study covered the views of people in 41 countries with more than 42,000 people being interviewed to compile the list.

Bill Gates remains the most admired man followed by former US President Barack Obama. In the women category, Michelle Obama tops as the most admired woman in the world followed by Oprah Winfrey.

Jackie Chan, Xi Jinping, Jack Ma, Narendra Modi, Cristiano Ronaldo, Dalai Lama, Lionel Mesi and Vladimir Putin close the top ten list of most admired men across the world.

In the women front, Angelina Jolie, Queen Elizabeth, Emma Watson, Malala Yousafzai, Peng Liyuan, Hillary Clinton, Tu Youyou and Taylor Swift are among the top ten most admired across the world.

Microsoft founder Bill Gates remains the world’s most admired man. He’s topped the list every time YouGov has conducted the survey.

The top five men remain unchanged since last year. Former US president Barack Obama comes in second, and the third to fifth places are all occupied by Chinese figures: actor Jackie Chan in third, president Xi Jinping in fourth and businessman Jack Ma in fifth.

The top twenty most admired women sees five new faces this year. Two are married to the world leaders: Melania Trump and Chinese singer Peng Liyuan, who is the wife of president Xi Jinping. They are joined by Chinese scientist Tu Youyou, Indian actress Sushmita Sen and US talk show host Ellen DeGeneres.

Entertainers dominate the female list, with 12 of the most admired women being actresses, singers or TV presenters (although some, like Emma Watson and Angelina Jolie, are also notable for their humanitarian work). By contrast, the list of most admired men contains more people from political, business and sporting backgrounds.

Portuguese footballer Cristiano Ronaldo and Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan have climbed the highest up the tables since last year, both having risen three places to seventh place and seventeenth place respectively. Indian actress Aishwarya Rai has fallen the furthest, down five places to sixteenth.

In December YouGov gathered open-ended nominations from panelists across 41 countries, asking them simply: “Thinking about people alive in the world today, which [man or woman] do you most admire?” These nominations were then used to compile a list of the 20 men and 20 women who received the most nominations and were nominated in at least four countries. An additional 10 popular local figures were added to the lists for individual countries. 

In January we then used the lists to poll each of the 41 countries asking two questions: “who do you truly admire?”, where respondents could make multiple selections, and “who do you MOST admire?”, where they could only pick one. These two numbers were combined into a percentage share of admiration, displayed to the right of each name in the graphic above and table below, which shows the full results for every country including local celebrities and public figures: