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LONDON – Europeans woke up Wednesday to the now familiar sight of a derailed US presidential election. Like Asians hours earlier, they were fascinated by the pitched battle between President Trump and former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and horrified by Trump’s demand to stop counting votes.
“Trump-Biden: America is tearing apart,” Le Monde newspaper said in a front page headline, summarizing French coverage of the election that has often depicted a country falling apart at the seams.
“Okay America, so what the heck is going on now?” wrote Marina Hyde, a columnist for The Guardian, Britain’s leading left-leaning newspaper. She answered her own question by venturing, “Don’t discount anything, except maybe optimism.”
In Australia and Indonesia, crowds gathered around televisions in cafes, trying to catch a glimpse of states turning red or blue. In Iran, the hashtag #Elections_America was trending on Persian Twitter, while in Japan, Fuji Television covered the elections with graphics that mixed old-school cardboard cutouts with common avatars in video games.
Across the world, the results from across the American electoral map produced a fascinating and disconcerting drama. The stakes are global, as is the audience, illustrating the cliché that the presidential elections in the United States affect everyone, even those who are not eligible to vote in them.
“It’s like the final of the World Cup,” said Moch Faisal Karim, professor of international relations at Binus University in Indonesia.
For many, the election was an opportunity to witness the long-awaited defeat of Trump, who has eroded alliances, started trade wars and enraged foreign leaders with his erratic and transactional style. After the nonstop drama of his first term, much of the world is hungry for America to return to the more traditional course Biden has promised.
For those countries that have benefited from Trump, the prospect of a President Biden sparked more conflicting emotions. In Israel, where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has forged close ties with Trump, right-wing commentators took advantage of the unexpected result to vilify the American media.
“The gap between what they said and what happened is simply too wide to believe they didn’t see this,” Shimon Riklin, an ally of Mr. Netanyahu, said on Twitter. “We had predicted the most organized and splendid fake news in history.”
Many viewers wanted nothing more than a quick resolution, but instead there was uncertainty and anguish. First it was the quadrennial refresher course on the complexities of the American process to elect a president and then, while the votes were counted, the hours of waiting, as news websites and television channels were filled with maps and charts of 50 states familiar to Americans.
They tried to make sense of the images of the bricked-up stores against potential violence. When Trump appeared at the White House around 2 a.m. in Washington and prematurely declared that he had won, warning that he would go to the Supreme Court to try to shut down the rest of the vote count, the anxiety deepened.
“Donald Trump is playing with fire in a context that is already quite explosive,” Le Monde declared.
Michael Fullilove, executive director of the Lowy Institute, a research institute in Sydney, Australia, said: “President Trump’s statement should concern anyone who believes in democracy.”
“A contested election can be the worst possible outcome for the United States,” Fullilove added. “Covid had already made the United States look very bad. Now he seems feverish and disoriented ”.
In Asia, the election results came in while markets were trading, triggering wild fluctuations.
In a region that has largely controlled the coronavirus, many people tried to make sense of a country where infections remained rampant and voters seemed willing to re-elect a leader who had falsely claimed the virus would go away.
South Korean newspapers broadcast real-time updates on the vote count with banner headlines on their websites, and cable channels had uninterrupted coverage, making this the most-watched American election in the country in recent memory. .
On Wednesday afternoon in South Korea, when Trump began to look competitive across the map and had captured a handful of battle states, the media and social media users expressed surprise at his performance.
“It’s unbelievable that he’s head-to-head in the race, even after making a mess in the fight against Covid-19,” wrote a local commenter on Twitter.
In China, state media repeatedly highlighted the potential for election-related riots or other violence. CCTV, the state broadcaster, aired footage of the heavy police presence in Washington and protesters pushing each other near the White House, though protests there Tuesday night were largely peaceful.
For some countries, there was hope that the elections would herald a change in America’s relationship with the world.
In Indonesia, some analysts said a Biden victory would soften the American approach to the Muslim world, while in Iran, where the economy has been hit by Trump sanctions, some had the feeling that the elections would have a greater impact on Iranians than Americans.
“The motto of the revolution was ‘no to the West, no to the East,’” Ebrahim Alinia, a real estate agent, wrote on Twitter. “But after 41 years, we hope that the US elections will save our economy.”
In Brazil, where President Jair Bolsonaro is a populist ally of Trump, critics pinned their hopes on Biden to change Trump’s policies. “A change in American policy can help postpone and even reverse the tipping point of the Amazon rainforest,” Natalie Unterstell, an environmental activist, said on Twitter.
In Singapore, there was a sense of “helplessness” about the elections, said Eugene Tan, a law professor and political analyst at Singapore Management University.
“We still tend to see the United States as a standard-bearer for democracy,” Tan said. “And to see how the outcome of an election is going to be questioned, how people think there will be violence, that society will be more fractured, I think it has been quite revealing for many in Singapore. “
While the severity of the election was evident in the news coverage, in Japan it came with a bit of flamboyance, intended or not.
On Asahi TV, presenters explained the Electoral College with puzzle pieces of battlefield states printed with electoral vote counts. A vote counter at the bottom of the screen showed images of candidates reacting to increases in counts: Mr. Trump was represented with his mouth open, his hands waving on both sides of his face. Mr. Biden appeared with a sober fist.
Even Alexei A. Navalny, the leader of the Russian opposition who has defied President Vladimir V. Putin and nearly died after being poisoned with a nerve agent, found humor in the flashy ritual of American democracy.
“I woke up and went to Twitter to see who was winning,” aware Wednesday. “It is not yet clear. That is what I call elections ”.
Mark Landler reported from London and Damien Cave from Sydney, Australia. Aurelien Breeden from Paris contributed reporting; Ernesto Londono from Rio de Janeiro; Elizabeth Kershner of Jerusalem; Motoko Rich from Tokyo; Hannah Beech from Bangkok; Vivian Wang from Hong Kong; Yan Zhuang from Melbourne, Australia; Choe Sang-Hun from Seoul, South Korea; Farnaz Fassihi from New York; Andrew E. Kramer of Moscow; and Abdi Latif Dahir from Cairo. Claire Fu contributed research.
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