US election 2020: world braces for America’s vote
- For multitudes across the globe, Trump’s outsize impact on global affairs makes US contest impossible to ignore
- Covid-19, climate change, immigration, far-right extremism and other issues mean this American election is even more closely watched than usual
In one of the towns in Normandy where US Army paratroopers fought and died on D-Day in World War II, a French store owner already has readied the “Trump 2020” flag that he plans to unfurl in celebration if the US president wins a second term.
But in Sweden, a scientist alarmed by the increasing signs of global warming she witnessed on her latest Arctic research trip is hoping Trump is voted out, not simply because she believes Democrat Joe Biden will do better against climate change but also because she wants to fall back in love with a country she now finds repellent.
Two voices, from among the multitudes of people across the globe for whom the US election is not a faraway event in a faraway land but an impossible-to-ignore contest with stakes for the entire world. For many, that is especially true in a year in which the scythe of the coronavirus through millions of lives and livelihoods has driven home the need for countries to work together.
Because Trump has had such an outsize impact on global affairs – tracing his own “America First” course and upending traditional alliances, friendships and norms – the possibility of change in the White House has left the rest of the world even more captivated than usual by an election in which it has no say.
“America votes and gives the world a president,” tweeted the editor in chief of the Ashraq Al-Awsat newspaper, which is Saudi-owned and published from London.