Boz has an excellent roundup of all the polls being taken around the hemisphere, with at least one for each country. The polls are invaluable tools for sensing which way the winds of change are blowing in this coming fateful election year in the Americas.

He also has a link to a very valuable poll from The Economist that shows how the attitudes of the public from different countries stack up against each other.

In this particular poll, note the powerful pro-market sentiment expressed by the stars of Colombia, who rate number one in our hemisphere for faith in free markets. There’s also the gratifyingly warm feelings toward the U.S. by our dear friends in Central America – followed by free-trade-seeking Peru, Colombia and Ecuador. Those are our friends. We need to start treating them like that!

One other detail that interested me: the two nations with the most negative sentiment against the bullying, meddlesome Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez were the fragile nations of Ecuador and Bolivia. Hugo Chavez better start laying low and taking his hands off, he’s an unpopular guy in those countries, and not to be trusted.