By Abbas Poptani
British interest in this election has been unprecedented in both its intensity and innovation. Barack Obama campaigners canvassed expats at London’s famed Caribbean street party, the Notting Hill Carnival, in late August, while budding politicos from the Labour and Conservative parties flew into North Carolina and Ohio respectively for last-minute battleground efforts.
The fervor came to a head Tuesday as mock elections were held at universities, colleges and bars across the land. From the winding streams and dreamy church spires of Oxford to thriving nightspots in London’s touristy Leicester Square and the trend-setting East End, academics and young partygoers alike joined in the action. The Oxford Union, founded in 1823 as the independent debating chamber for Oxford University students, hosted a cheerfully boisterous election night more Hogarth than high-tech. Historic libraries were turned into makeshift taverns for the night as students held lively mock debates in character as presidential candidates. Students were so convinced of a devastating landslide in Obama’s favor that the practice of vote-counting for their mock election was deemed an unnecessary inconvenience.
At the University of Edinburgh, Obama won 85 percent share of the Edinburgh vote. John McCain finished third with 3 percent behind the surging Green Party’s 12 percent (never mind that the Greens aren’t a real player in national American politics). Betsy Super, former John Kerry activist and organizer of the “You Decide!” event, suggested that the exceptional level of British interest in the election stemmed from “a distaste for the Bush era” and the “yearning for change” amongst Britons.
London’s largest mock election took place in Leicester Square. Campaign group Progressive Vision hosted 700 revelers who danced into the small hours of the morning after electing Sen. Obama as their “President of the World” by 86 percent to McCain’s 6 percent. Elsewhere, margins were slightly more realistic--Holywell High School in Wrexham, North Wales, has successfully forecasted every U.S. presidential election result since 1980, bar the 2000 Bush-Gore election decided by the Supreme Court. Even here, Obama won by 72 percent to 28 percent.
Online elections also captured the popular imagination--The Economist’s Global Electoral College poll delivered an epic landslide, Obama’s 9,115 votes dwarfing McCain’s 203, with only participants identifying themselves as citizens from four nations picking the Republican candidate. Two of those, Iraq and Cuba, were likely influenced by U.S. soldiers and Miami exiles and still, the largest margin of victory for McCain was 10 percent in Iraq.
Not everyone has been enthused by wall-to-wall election coverage, however. Alan Sked, professor of international history at the London School of Economics & Political Science, a specialist on American history, forecasted “disillusionment and cynicism” among Obama supporters as “things won’t change as radically and quickly as people expect”. Back at the Oxford Union, however, change was not the only reason some students preferred Obama, one simply stating “Michelle Obama is sexier than Sarah Palin”.
