A number of websites to poll readers from around the world on their choice of who the next president of the US should be have popped up recently. And while non-Americans do not have a vote in the elections, they are still having their say online.
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.
