The US election online: webby tricks and tweets

Twitter started plugging its US election feature today, and I couldn’t understand the grumbling from some of my Twitter friends. “They’re thrusting that damned election under our noses - and I’m not American and I’m bored already” was the general thrust of the complaints scrolling by.

I can’t get enough of it. The whole grand circus - the big themes and the strategies being played out by both camps - makes this the most interesting campaign I’ve ever seen, and I’m glued to it. I’ll probably stay up tonight for the debate, now we know Sen. McCain is going to turn up.

Aside from Twitter’s effort, which m’colleague Meg Pickard writes about in detail at her place, another wheeze that has caught my eye is the Economist’s Global Electoral College. It’s pretty much as it says on the tin; a worldwide electoral college where countries have their votes allocated based on their population. Like Twitter, it’s a way of reflecting the opinion of lots of people who don’t have a formal say in this hugely significant election.

“The Economist has redrawn the electoral map to give all 195 of the world’s countries (including the United States) a say in the election’s outcome,” explains the magazine, making its allocation of votes to the US sound like an act of largess, and also suggesting the poll will have an impact on the actual outcome, rather than it all being make-believe. I think most US voters would have a problem with a system that handed them only gets 432 college votes out of the total 9,875, while India gets 1,588 and China 1,900.

Globally, It’s safe to say the race is not quite as close as it is in the US; no countries are red so far - not even China - and most of the world is blue. McCain, it appears, has yet to convince the world, or at least the Economist-reading bit of it, and if Rest Of World had a vote this would be a landslide for Obama.

There are a number of countries which are still white, or haven’t passed the threshold of 10 votes. Iran, interestingly, is undeclared - we can only assume this state of affairs reflects a lack of Adam Smith-admiring Economist readers in the country, rather than genuine indecision.

Not that we know, of course, if the country’s endorsment would play well among those who actually do have a vote in 39 days…