Among such sites is Who the World Wants, which aims polls non-Americans, giving them the choice between selecting Republican Party candidate John McCain or Democratic Party nominee Barack Obama.

“This website is intended to finding out who the world outside the United States of America wants as a President for your country. Please, if you are a United States Citizen, DO NOT VOTE (you get to vote for real),” says the announcement on the site.

So far, the results show Obama as a global favourite, with 1,032 votes in his favour, against McCain's 685 global fans.

Another site sharing a similar idea is Who Would the World Elect? On this site, Republican Ron Paul is the forerunner, with close to 67,000 votes from around the world. Obama is a far second with 21,000 votes while former Democratic Party nominee Hillary Clinton is a third, with around 6,800 votes. The site, which has so far seen 118,332 votes cast, also has a listing of where the votes came from, and for whom.

From Afghanistan, for instance, eight people have had their say as follows:

3 votes for Ron Paul
3 votes for Hillary Clinton
2 votes for Barack Obama

Australia too favours Ron Paul, with 1,267 votes for him. The other results are as follows:

710 votes for Barack Obama
176 votes for Hillary Clinton
97 votes for Dennis Kucinich
72 votes for Mike Gravel
28 votes for John Edwards
27 votes for Rudy Giuliani
13 votes for John McCain
11 votes for Fred Thompson
8 votes for Mitt Romney
5 votes for Chris Dodd
4 votes for Joe Biden
4 votes for Mike Huckabee
4 votes for Bill Richardson
3 votes for Sam Brownback
3 votes for Tom Tancredo
2 votes for Duncan Hunter
2 votes for Ralph Nader

For a full listing of how people in other countries have voted, click here.

What if we all voted? is yet another site, operating on the same principle. The site describes itself as:

a simple poll* of who the world would vote for in the upcoming US presidential election… if they could.

Obama leads the polls on this site and the full results can be found here.

 But, rhythmically, it's quite alluring. It can make anything, even, for
example, a simple chair, seem magnificent. Why vote for someone who
says: 'See that chair. You can sit on it' when you can have someone
like Obama say: 'This chair can take your weight. This chair can hold
your buttocks, 15 inches in the air. This chair, this wooden chair, can
support the ass of the white man or the crack of the black man, take
the downward pressure of a Jewish girl's behind or the butt of a
Buddhist adolescent, it can provide comfort for Muslim buns or Mormon
backsides, the withered rump of an unemployed man in Nevada struggling
to get his kids through high school and needful of a place to sit and
think, the plump can of a single mum in Florida desperately struggling
to make ends meet but who can no longer face standing, this chair, made
from wood felled from the tallest redwood in Chicago, this chair, if
only we believed in it, could sustain America's huddled arse.'

But someone took it and ran with it in the comments section..

Biden: I have worked with chairs all over the world, and most members of Congress agree with my plan for how to make chairs
Bloomberg: I've put together a committee to survey voters on whether they want me to make their chairs
Clinton: I have the most experience in making chairs
Edwards: I will fight the chairmakers!
Giuliani: I can best protect you from the danger of chairs, just as I did in NYC
Huckabee: Chairs did not evolve, but were created
Kucinich: We should have a one-payer system for chairs
McCain: My friends, I believe we can sit together in our chairs and work out bipartisan solutions without torture
Obama: Together we can create chairs in a new way
Paul: Why is the government involved in making chairs?
Romney: Venture capitalism has made American chairs the greatest in the world
Tancredo: We must build a fence to keep out foreign illegal chairs
Thompson: I like a comfortable, yet presidential looking chair

Touche.. 

In normal circumstances it would have been almost impossible for a Huckabee type candidate to emerge. However with the field being fragmented and more conventional social conservatives such as Romney and Fred Thomson having their own flaws, Huckabee’s strong Christian background and endearing personality has seen him rise to the top.

In many ways, the rise/need of an economic populist was foreseen by two excellent conservative bloggers, Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam in this article (their book on the same issues is coming out soon). They argued that as the Republican base was becoming more white working class, they needed to come up with more policies which appealed to that demographic such as those which promote the institution of the family and help the less well off, rather than looking after the Republican elite who are more concerned with tax cuts and free trade.

This is significant as if Huckabee somehow wins the nomination (and I’ve outlined a scenario below), it would probably be a lot easier for the Democratic President to pass legislation on issues such as universal health care. Even if he doesn’t, he’s demonstrated that there is a growing economic insecurity in working class America over outsourcing and income inequality even if the mainstream media doesn’t give it as much attention because it doesn’t really affect them that much.

On the whole It is still unlikely that Huckabee wins the Republican Nomination. Yet the conventional wisdom on Huckabee having no chance, was that once the candidates were eliminated, the rest of the party would get behind whoever was fighting Huckabee. However there is a scenario in which McCain wins New Hampshire but Romney and Giuliani continue to run thereby splitting the non-evangelical vote.

If as expected Huckabee wins South Carolina then he would have a real shot of taking Florida which would give him the most momentum going into Super Tuesday. Even if as expected, McCain wins the nomination, I expect Huckabee to have swept much of the South leaving McCain-Huckabee as the only viable ticket. Barring any major gaffes, I have a feeling that Huckabee is here to stay.

[For the uninitiated: Right now each party is picking its nominee, with elections in each state (to attract a number of delegates). The party nominee who attracts the magic number of delegates becomes their presidential nominee… and then the fight for that begins]

On the Democrat side:
I think Obama may come second in New Hampshire but will win in South Carolina. After these three elections comes Super-Duper-Tuesday, when 27 states will hold elections. During that, I think Obama will attract slightly more delegates than Hilary Clinton but not be able to knock her out. To really do that, he will have to enlist John edwards as his running Vice-President mate (not sure if he can do that though yet).

Edwards will be pretty much out of steam after South Carolina, where he will come third…. unless he comes first or second in New Hampshire.

Clinton is probably plotting some serious mud she can sling at Obama in time for Super-Duper-Tuesday.

Republicans
Fred Thompson will be out before SDT. After that big 27-state election in early Feb, I suspect John McCain and Rudy Giuliani will show poor ratings but Giuliani will probably refuse to drop out then, believing he can still milk the terrorism angle to make a comeback. Eventually he will have to drop out. This will leave Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Ron Paul as still the candidates with the strongest bases or momentum or cash to carry on.