Worrying Survey on Democracy

An article in Sunday’s Washington Post drew encouragement from a World Values Survey that found over 60 percent of people in Arab countries agree that “Democracy is the best form of Government.” It passed over without comment, however, the finding from the same survey that less than 40 percent of people in the U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand agreed. What were the other 60 percent thinking? Can this survey be accurate? The figure is not in the online WP article and I couldn’t verify it’s accuracy from the source but this United Nations report has the same figure (figure 1).