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In Australia and Indonesia, crowds gathered around televisions in restaurants and cafes, trying to catch a glimpse of how American states were turning red or blue. In Iran, the hashtag #Elections_America was trending on Persian Twitter, while in Japan, Fuji Television spent a good chunk of Wednesday morning covering the elections with graphics that mixed old-school cardboard cutouts with video game avatars.
Around the world, as the results filtered across the American electoral map, it became a fascinating and perplexing drama. The stakes are global, as is the audience, glued to the kind of general news coverage most often reserved for elections closer to home.
“It’s like the final of the World Cup,” said Moch Faisal Karim, professor of international relations at Binus University in Indonesia.
The intense global interest reflects the still considerable power of the United States and the unpredictability that has shaped the last four years. President Trump has been a chief global disruptor, seeking to redefine relations with American allies in Europe and Asia, working to slow the rise of China, and closing in on autocrats in North Korea and Russia.
After surprise after surprise during his first term, much of the world is desperate to know if the Trump era will continue or if the United States will return to the more traditional course promised by Joseph R. Biden Jr.
But while many viewers would have liked nothing more than a quick resolution, instead there was uncertainty and anguish. First came the four-year refresher courses on America’s complicated approach to electing a president, and then, as the votes were counted, the hours of waiting, as news websites and television stations filled with maps of 50 states. and sliding graphics familiar to Americans.
People all over the world found themselves doing difficult math at the Electoral College, while trying to keep up with the mosaic of vote counting procedures across the United States. They tried to make sense of the images of bricked-up shops against the potential for violence and, like Americans, wondered what voters would decide and what each candidate would say to the world.
When Trump appeared at the White House around 2 a.m. in Washington and declared prematurely that he had won, warning that he would go to the Supreme Court to try to close the rest of the vote count, the world’s anxiety seemed to deepen.
“President Trump’s statement should concern anyone who believes in democracy,” said Michael Fullilove, executive director of the Lowy Institute, a research institute in Sydney, Australia.
“A contested election may be the worst possible outcome for the United States,” he added. “Covid had already made the United States look very bad. Now he seems feverish and disoriented ”.
Bright Simons, an analyst and executive at the Imani Research Institute in Accra, Ghana, said a Trump victory would make it difficult to support civil society movements across Africa that are working to strengthen democratic values.
“African civil society actors are also increasingly beginning to realize that when it comes to deeper democratic cultural goals, they cannot continue to rely on Western support,” Simons said. “So there have been some interesting unintended consequences, which will be compounded if the incumbent is kept.”
In Asia, where results came in during the business day, causing markets to fluctuate wildly, interest never waned. In a region that has primarily controlled the coronavirus pandemic, many people tried to make sense of a country where infections remained rampant and voters still seemed willing to consider reelection of the leader who had falsely claimed the virus would simply disappear.
In South Korea, all major newspapers broadcast real-time updates on the vote count through headlines on their websites, and several cable channels had uninterrupted coverage, making it the most watched American election in the world. country in recent memory.
By Wednesday afternoon, when Trump looked competitive on the map and had captured a handful of battle states, South Korea’s news and social media seemed surprised by his performance.
“I can’t say I’m an expert on US presidential elections,” wrote a local commenter on Twitter. “But it’s just amazing that he’s head-to-head in the race, even after making a mess in the fight against Covid-19.”
In China, state media repeatedly highlighted the potential for election-related riots or other violence.
CCTV, China’s state broadcaster, shared images of the heavy police presence in Washington and protesters pushing each other near the White House, though protests there Tuesday night were largely peaceful. Xinhua, the state news agency, shared a video of policemen patrolling outside voting sites in New York and entrenched businesses.
The level of interest in the elections was evident on Chinese social media, where the hashtag “American election” had been viewed more than 3.9 billion times on Weibo, a platform similar to Twitter.
Comments from Internet users ranged from serious analysis of the election results to multiple viral clips of Trump’s dance. One publication, which noted that America’s liberal urban centers were surrounded by wide red stripes on the electoral map, joked that Trump had secretly studied Mao Zedong’s revolutionary strategy of “agricultural areas surrounding cities.”
In Russia, reporters on state television lingered on uncertainty in the vote count. The government of President Vladimir V. Putin enjoys portraying the United States as hypocritical for lecturing post-Soviet states on democracy.
“What we see on our screens is a spectacle choreographed between two parties, behind which is the elite,” Vyacheslav Volodin, speaker of the Russian Parliament, told state television. “If they chose this system for themselves, let them rule by it, but then don’t turn around and teach us how to hold elections.”
In some countries, however, there were hopes that the elections would usher in a change in America’s relationship with the world. In Indonesia, there was optimism that a Biden victory could soften the American approach to the Muslim world. And in Iran, where the economy has been stifled by Trump-imposed sanctions, some had a feeling the election 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.”
Experts on the Philippines, a country headed by a president, Rodrigo Duterte, who is often compared to Trump, used the elections to underscore the global power of populism.
Richard Heydarian, a political scientist who wrote a book on Duterte titled “The Rise of Duterte: A Populist Revolt Against Elite Democracy,” said on Twitter: “Let’s be honest, POPULISM is still a BEST SELLER.”
In another post, he said: “Coming from the PHILIPPINES, I’m like ZERO PERCENT SURPRISED by how TIGHT this RACE is!”
In Singapore, there was a sense of “helplessness” watching the elections, said Eugene Tan, a law professor and political analyst at Singapore Management University.
The United States plays an important role in the stability of Southeast Asia, he said, and there is concern that a second Trump term, with perhaps an even more introspective disposition, could produce a “seismic shift in the balance of power that has been producing ”. for a long time in this part of the world. “
The election has also changed the way Singaporeans view the United States, Tan said.
“We still tend to see the United States as a standard-bearer for democracy, and seeing how the outcome of an election will be challenged, how people think there is going to be violence, society is going to be more fractured, I think it’s been quite eye-opening for many in Singapore. “
While the seriousness of the choice was evident in news coverage around the world, in Japan it came with a bit of fantasy, intentional or not.
On Asahi TV, presenters explained the Electoral College using large puzzle pieces of battlefield statuses printed with electoral vote counts, placing them on candidate photos. A vote counter at the bottom of the screen showed images of candidates reacting to increases in electoral counts: Mr trump He was photographed with his mouth open, his hands waving on either side of his face, in an exuberant “Home Alone” pose. Mr biden appeared with a soberly raised fist.
At another point, Asahi represented swing states in calls. A correspondent for TBS, another network, appeared to report a version of Sims from the Oval Office. And Fuji TV showed a vote counter with illustrations of the candidates who looked like more like characters from a Nintendo game, or bobbleheads, than representations of the two men competing to lead the free world.
The reports were contributed by 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 from Moscow and Abdi Latif Dahir from Cairo. Claire Fu contributed research.
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