Political Elections in a Global Context

[disalarming]

This past weekend, Australia held a federal election. From what I’ve gathered based on my Australian friends’ tweets and skimming related headlines in Google News, Tony Abbott, the leader of the conservative party, is tipped to win by a razor thin margin. Jess has a fairly good summation of the whole election debacle in Australia from a non-conservative’s point of view, for those who are interested.

Several months ago, the UK held an election for a new prime minister as well. The UK had a hung parliament, which was a big deal, and there was a bit of a kerfuffle in sorting out the new governing party. Again, most of the information I got about it was through my friends’ tweets, with a pinch from the Google News headlines.

I wouldn’t know about any of this election information (in Australia, in the UK, or any other country) if I didn’t have friends in those countries, both online and offline, which alerted me to the fact that there was an election occurring and prompted me to do some independent news research. None of this election stuff is really covered in the US media. The only election in recent years I can recall getting any US media coverage is that of Iran in 2009, which is obvious because of what happened with the protests. I know that whenever the US has a presidential election, the entire world covers it in the media. But when other countries have elections, US media is largely indifferent.

I remember in the lead-up to the 2008 US presidential election, a friend of mine from England told me he thought that the entire world should elect the US president, not just US citizens. He said that because the entire world is affected by who the US chooses, the entire world should vote. I guess that’s why US presidential election media coverage is global while elections in other countries get no coverage in the US. Whomever countries like Australia and the UK elect as their leader largely do not affect the US¹, but the decision in who becomes the leader of the free world impacts everyone.

1. I told a friend about the current election debacle in Australia and his response was, “Why should we care? It’s not like Australia is going to suddenly turn against the US no matter who they elect.” [↩]

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.