Since programming is a rapidly growing field and Python is the first language for many, I suspect that Python's scoping rules are in fact intuitive to most of its users. The ones who stumble are those with intuition built by some other language.
I'd argue that's the opposite. Python was the first dynamic language I learned. The scoping rules in Python didn't bother me because I didn't know any better, not because they're intuitive or well designed.
Fair anecdote. I'll offer that in my experience teaching hundreds of students, most don't have trouble with the cascade from locals to globals to builtins, and quickly grasp that globals are looked up for each call. That closures work at all confuses the ones who are thinking carefully about local scope. I may have a biased sample of students, but I think it's decent evidence.