Europe pays close watch to election

[unhappycamper]

Europe pays close watch to election
By Sandra Jontz, Geoff Ziezulewicz and Kevin Dougherty, Stars and Stripes
European edition, Sunday, November 2, 2008

It’s dubbed Obama-mania.

Though a smattering of Europeans recently interviewed might not be up on the finite details of the U.S. presidential campaign, they do know the name of at least one of the candidates.

"Don’t ask me names, but I know Obama and the old fella, who was in the military," said Margaret Carrigan, a British employee at one of the Air Force bases in England. "And then the beauty queen."

This spring, a survey by the Pew Global Attitudes Project 2008 of 24,000 people in 24 nations found Obama is the preferred candidate — in some places by overwhelming margins. "(A)mong Europeans paying attention to the presidential contest, large majorities voice confidence in Obama. … Meanwhile, relatively few have a positive opinion of his Republican rival, John McCain," reads a portion of one report garnered from the survey, titled: "Obamamania Abroad: The Candidate Can Expect a Warm Welcome in Europe, Not So in the Middle East."

In Germany for instance, 82 percent of those surveyed expressed confidence in Obama, with 33 percent in McCain, the report states.


Rest of article at: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=58557