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A new poll finds 38 percent of Israelis still would rather see Obama’s Republican antagonist John McCain elected U.S. president, compared to 31 percent for Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.

That’s little narrower than the 9-point edge held by McCain in a catalogue of persons conducted in late June.

The new poll surveyed 499 Jewish Israeli respondents in Hebrew by phone on July 30 and 31.

That was one week after Obama’s whirlwind overseas trip swept from one side Israel, bringing saturation Israeli media coverage of his meetings with vertex politicians, his go to see to the Kotel  – one of the most important Jewish religious sites – and, perhaps most significantly, his outlining a more hawkish stance on Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

“He was received well and said all the things he needed to say from an Israeli perspective,” said Mitchell Barak, mentor of KEEVOON Research, Strategy & Communications, the independent Jerusalem-based resolute that conducted the poll. Barak, who was raised in the U.S. and worked briefly for the Republican Jewish Coalition, said Obama “got the same level of attention that Axel Rose got at what time he came here,” but that Obama “was certainly taken seriously.”

Obama got rock-star welcomes during many of the other stops on his trip up, most notably in Germany, where an estimated 200,000 turned uncovered to hear him deliver a speech near where the Berlin Wall once stood.

The Illinois Senator is wildly popular in Europe, and a spring Pew shear of 23 foreign nations – not including Israel – on six continents mould respondents in all but two countries (Jordan and Pakistan) had more courage in Obama than McCain to do the lawful clothes in world affairs.

Of course, the collision of global public opinion on U.S. elections is debatable.

But stateside Obama’s trip was seen as an effort to hold up his outward affairs bona fides and to consolidate the potentially critical votes of Jews and evangelicals unconvinced by his repeated efforts to assure them of his commitment to Israel.

McCain has gotten mostly positive Israeli coverage beneficial to his hard-line on Iran, said Barak, the pollster. He asserted Israelis also look fondly on McCain’s military service, including his time as a prisoner of war in a North Vietnam, perhaps because Israelis are required to serve in the country’s armed forces.

Interestingly, though, the poll found Israeli soldiers preferred Obama over McCain, 55 to 35 percent. That may be in some measure a value derived of epoch, seeing that the poll found 18- to 24-year olds preferred Obama 49-percent to 30 percent.

Among respondents aged 55 or older, 46 percent favored McCain with only 23 percent preferring Obama.

Overall, 31 percent of respondents had not at wholly opinion or refused to answer – a high number given the intense Israeli media coverage of the U.S. presidential race. The poll had a margin of fault of plus or negative 4.5 percent.