Shortly before President Obama departs for a trip to the Middle East, a new national poll suggests that one in five Americans has a favorable view of Muslim countries.

That view compares with 46 percent of the people questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey who say they have an unfavorable opinion of Muslim countries. That’s up 5 percentage points from 2002, when 41 percent indicated that they had an unfavorable view…

[T]he poll suggests that six out of 10 think that the Muslim world considers itself at war with the United States.