The American presidential election (66)
I’ve always said that, if the world could vote in the US Presidential election, it would choose Barack Obama. Now “The Economist” magazine is running a world-wide on-line poll.
Votes are cast on a country-wide level. Each country is assigned a number of votes according to the size of its population ( “electoral-college votes” on the model of America’s actual electoral-college system). Then all the countries’ votes are tallied, to determine each candidate’s worldwide total. You can see at a glance which countries are pro-Obama or pro-McCain, along with their respective vote percentages. The candidate with the most electoral-college votes will win the worldwide election.
So far, Obama is running away with it as you’ll see here.
September 25th, 2008 at 10:05 pm
Nice to see, but how many of the Economist poll participants will actually be voting in the US on Nov. 4?
Sorry Roger, I know that you’re an Obamaniac, but you can hardly deem the poll participants representative of any real group. They are totally self-selected, and there is absolutely no scientific validity to the results. Looking at the poll results for the US (it’s part of the world!) on Sept. 25, the results are Obama 77%, McCain 23% – hardly a reflection of reality. Even the most optimistic polls are giving Obama no more than a 9% lead, most polls put the lead at 2 to 3%. We’re just going to have to work harder in the remaining 40 days . . .
September 26th, 2008 at 9:06 am
The “Economist” poll has no scientific validity whatsoever, David. It’s just a bit of fun.
The fact that the magazine is running it at all though – besides it being a tool for capturing e-mails addresses – reflects the intense interest around the world in this particular national election.
September 26th, 2008 at 10:48 am
If only the citizens in the USA were looking out at the rest of the world and not looking inward all the time.
But then, would we be any different if we were in the same position?
Methinks not.
We would vote for who we wanted and ignore what other countries said about the candidates.
Its called nationalism, patriotism or just ‘me first, last and in between’.
September 26th, 2008 at 11:12 am
I saw the poll too. It’s brilliant fun!
It’s also deeply depressing that many people are ‘voting’ from countries where they have no free and fair elections and journalists are intimidated or worse murdered.
One of the commenters had a long and funny rant, saying basically if we let you have say in our election, then you can join the US as additional states. I thought it was funny – he suggested people might not like the outcome!
‘Ya pays yer money, ya takes yer choices’…
Another commenter was also very insightful — he said something to the effect that these do not reflect a global view on US domestic policies, but peoples’ preferences about certain aspects of US foreign policy. Of course, the domestic policies will decide the election, which is why it is a much closer race.
It should be very interesting. I am flying back to the US just before the election.