US President Barack Obama is more popular in Cuba than either Fidel or Raul Castro, a poll for Spanish language cable channels states.

Cuba and the United States are drawing closer amid the thawing of a bitter cold war split that erected a trade embargo between the two countries.

The poll sought views from 1200 Cuban residents in face-to-face interviews about Cubans’ political views and their feelings for the future.

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On a scale of positivity, 80 per cent of Cubans rated President Obama positively, clearly ahead of current Cuban president Raul Castro at 47 per cent, and former president Fidel Castro at 44 per cent.

The poll shows more than half of those surveyed (55 per cent) want to leave the island country, and 52 per cent of those people want to go to the US.

When separated by age group, the majority of people aged 18-49 want to leave while older people mainly want to stay.

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When asked about aspects of their society they were satisfied with, Cubans said they were 68 per cent satisfied with their health system and 72 per cent satisfied with their education system.

But their economic system languished with 19 per cent satisfaction and their communist, one-party political system with 39 per cent.

And in good news for the current government’s direction, the poll shows that 97 per cent of Cubans believe the normalisation of the US-Cuba relationship was good.

The March 17-27 poll was conducted with government approval on the island in a joint venture between cable news channels Univision Noticias, Fusion, pollsters Bendixen and Amandi, and the Washington Post. It has a margin of error of three per cent.