Ahead of knife-edge US election, ‘Global Vote’ places Trump third

The votes have been cast and counted and Hillary Clinton overwhelmingly chosen as favorite — with Donald Trump coming in a lowly third place in the poll.
That is, at least, according to the results of the online “Global Vote,” published Monday, which allowed people around the world to have their say on the US election.
None of the votes in the virtual poll will, of course, count toward this week’s divisive US election.
But the ballot at least gives some indication of how people around the world — at least those who went to www.globalvote.org to have their say — would vote.
Billed as the “first worldwide presidential election,” the poll attracted votes from over 100,000 people across 130 countries worldwide.
Clinton received 52 percent of the vote, Green Party candidate Jill Stein secured 19 percent, Trump 14 percent, and Libertarian Gary Johnson received 7 percent. Eight percent of global voters abstained, indicating that in their view none of the four official candidates was “good news for the world.”
Global Vote creator Simon Anholt told Arab News that the results in the Middle East and North Africa were generally in line with the global trend.
“On the face of it, the results are broadly similar to the global (trend), where we’ve got pretty much a landslide for Clinton. And she tends to get around about 50 percent of the vote in each country,” he said on Monday night.
But there were some stark differences. In Saudi Arabia, Clinton received 43 percent of the vote, with Trump only getting “three or four” individual votes. And in Egypt, Clinton received 80 percent of the vote compared to 10 percent for Trump.
Anholt described some of the general findings in a statement issued with the results.
“What is clear from commentary around this vote is that Trump is seen by many as a threat to international prosperity and stability. But this is despite a sizable proportion of voters admiring him as the sort of straight talking, powerful and direct leader they would happily vote for if he was a candidate in their own country,” he said.
“Meanwhile, although Clinton received nearly three times as many votes as Stein, the degree of international unpopularity of the two main candidates is evident from the high number of votes that went to the relatively unknown third party candidates, as well as the 8 percent who chose to abstain.”
Global Vote participants were asked to consider only the international impact of each candidate’s presidency, since “domestic issues are the exclusive concern of US citizens.”
“I hope to remind people that becoming a head of state or head of government of any country means joining the team that runs the planet,” Anholt said.

Source: Arab News