THE HAGUE, 10/07/04 — A 45% majority of the global audience that participated in this week’s theworldvotes survey says that the U.S. and
its allies should stay in Iraq until the country is stable. Only 27% says that the coalition forces should leave immediately. 22% say that the coalition forces should leave after elections will have taken place in Iraq.
The poll shows that, three weeks before the actual election takes place, presidential candidate John F. Kerry receives 84% of the global vote.
George W. Bush gets 5%, Ralph Nader 7%. As for the vice-presidential candidates, John Edwards leads with 75%, compared to 5% in favor of Dick Cheney and 5% for Peter Camejo.
According to the poll, 66% of the participants think that John F. Kerry is best equipped to address global terrorism. George W. Bush gets 7% on
this issue. 17% is of the opinion that none of the candidates is suited to deal with global terrorism.
The U.S. Presidential election seems to be a truly global event. The majority (52%) of the participants consider themselves “well informed”
on the U.S. Presidential election. Only a minor fraction of 5% says to be poorly informed or not informed.
11 comments on “If The World Could Vote”
My reasons for wanting the troops to pull out are entirely personal.
I’m far too biased on this issue.
I’m rather conflicted on the issue. I want the Iraqis to be free of occupation, but I also don’t want them to be in the midst of a civil war or to be ruled by a puppet government. I don’t know if continuing the occupation will stop either of those things from happening (I fear it may make the latter impossible), but I think the Iraqis would be harmed more by an instant pull-out.
I do feel for the soldiers who have been or will be forced to take part in the occupation of Iraq. I just can’t justify bringing them home at the cost of thousands of innocent Iraqi men, women and children’s lives.
*sighs heavily* Exactly. I want the troops to be safe, but not at the cost of innocent lives.
What a mess. How do politicians even handle the burden of decisions like these?
I think many politicians follow whatever doctrine they do so devotedly that they leave no room of sincere weighing of situations or for their actions to be flawed. It’s the easy way out to believe that following a set of inflexible rules makes you always in the right, but many people follow it.
From what I have read recently, people like Bush tend to come to quick decisions and then not qustion them, not actively take in new data to reassess situations. For instance, Bush decided that Saddam was dangerous to the US and then went out to find facts or create facts to back that up, while a wise person would take a look at all the facts (Saddam has tried to have better relations with us in recent years, he doesn’t have the financial means to gather supplies to make any WMD’s, he sent money to families who lost members who committed suicide bombings but has no known connection with organized terror, WMD’s we gave him in the past will have been destroyed by now without an active program, Saddam is more worried about Iran (rightfully so) than any other nation), then weigh conjecture (Saddam has made idle threats in the past, he might have talked with terrorists, he may have been interested in creating a weapons program if sanctions were lifted), and finally make a flexible decision.
People call Kerry a “flip-flopper” because he seems to be unclear in his standing on a lot of issues. I think (and hope) that it’s actually the fact that he’s looking at all sides of each situation before making a decision.
I hope!!!
I have no doubt Kerry is thinking and analyzing each situation from multiple angles. I may disagree with him a lot, but I am certain he’s a better leader than Bush and those like him ever could be.
egads, i freaking WISH the world would vote. see? even the rest of the world sees that bush is a baaaaad idea for FOOOUR MOOOORE YEEEEARS.
And why shouldn’t we be able to decide the most powerful man in the world? We’re impacted by his actions almost as much as most Americans are (if not more, if you happen to be an Iraqi, or from another nation the US wishes to invade or place sanctions upon *cough* Cuba *cough*), and are at least as well informed.
i am very pleased to see that at http://www.electoral-vote.com, that kerry is in the lead for the first time.
this makes me happy.
the presidential debate is set to come on in about 4 min, i’m hoping that it will be a repeat of last week in that dubya will do nothing but incriminate himself.
Kerry was in the lead before the RNC, if I remember correctly.
I’m hoping Bush will seal his fate tonight. The sad thing is that if he improves at all over last time it may be seen as a victory.
i’ve been reading about it in a couple of places, and a lot of people are saying that he has shown TREMENDOUS improvement over the last time.
grr.
i hope that this will have been his shining moment (in all of his coining new bushisms like “since i been president”, “need wood?”, and “through green shaded eyeglasses” (or whatever the last was), and that the next one will be a total bomb.
i mean, really. what can they possibly say that they haven’t repeated a ton of times? i just hope that kerry will help to ease everyone’s mind by letting us know a little bit more about all these plans of his. he keeps saying ‘I HAVE A PLAAAAN’, but doesn’t give many details, which is angering a lot of teetering voters.
grr.