The American Elections: why Americans vote and Brits don’t

Even if you’ve caught only a few minutes of news on TV today it will have been pretty much impossible to miss today’s big news.  America elected Barack Obama as their next President, beating John McCain by a significant margin.  In fact, so big is this news that it dominates the headlines here in the UK too.  It’s as if the American President is our America President too.

I have been interested to note a certain level of bias in our news.  Now, I know politically-minded critics will say that no media is totally unbiased, but some are more likely to express opinions than others.  For instance, I am not at all surprised when Channel 4 or even ITV shows a report that is clearly in favour of one candidate over the other, but I was more surprised when the mighty BBC fell into the same trap.  I’m not at all interested in politics, and yet the media reports were such that I know plenty about Obama and next to nothing about McCain.  It’s as if this country has been told that Obama was the right person to win, and we’ve all just accepted it without realising it.  Everyone’s really pleased that Obama won, implying that we wouldn’t have been quite so overjoyed with the alternative outcome.

But what has intrigued me most is the different approach the Americans have in their elections. (more…)