From the Indonesian city where Barack Obama spent part of his childhood to Hong Kong’s bars and a Dublin pub, United States Democrats abroad grabbed their first chance to vote in Super Tuesday primaries.
Voting for expat Democrats is taking place across the world until February 12, as well as online, with a total of 11 votes at stake for the Democratic Party convention that will eventually choose its candidate.
The venues are about as far removed from formal political institutions as possible, from pubs and cafés to bookshops and doughnut stores.
In Jakarta, where Obama spent part of his youth living and going to school in Menteng, a suburb of decaying colonial grandeur, Democrats handed him a win over Hillary Clinton in the first result announced, party officials said.
Seventy-five percent of nearly 100 votes cast by expatriate Americans just past midnight (5pm GMT on Monday) went to Obama and 25% went to Clinton, Democrats Abroad officials here said.
Robert Lamont, a 53-year-old USAid worker in Jakarta, said he chose Obama for his combination of charisma and conciliatory foreign policy approach.
”That means he has more sensitivity to the wider world than someone who has lived in the US her whole life,” he said, comparing Obama to Clinton.
It is the first time Democrats living overseas have had the chance to vote in person for their own delegates. The Republican Party, in contrast, does not elect convention delegates from abroad.
In Bangkok, hundreds of people went to the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Thailand to cast their ballots.
Phil Robertson, chairperson of Democrats Abroad Thailand, expects thousands of Americans to vote at polling stations in the capital as well as the cities of Chiang Mai, Nong Khai and Udon Thani.
”We’ve had phenomenal turnouts,” he said.
”We’ve got a lot of Americans saying how happy they are to vote this way.”
‘Their votes will carry’
In neighbouring Cambodia, Democrats were busy on Tuesday setting up a polling station in Phnom Penh’s aptly-named USA Donuts ahead of voting on Saturday.
”People are seeing that they can actually vote and their votes will carry,” said Wayne Weightman, chairperson of Democrats Abroad in Cambodia, adding there had been ”huge interest” in Saturday’s event.
”As expats, we’re so close to the effects of our foreign policy … but some people have been feeling disenfranchised.”
India reported surging interest. Carolyn Sauvage-Mar (52) chairperson of the India committee of Democrats Abroad, said the phone was ”ringing off the hook” with people seeking to vote.
The presidential race has gripped the public imagination in close US ally Japan, with the public in particular fascinated by Obama.
A Japanese translation of Obama’s 1995 memoir Dreams from My Father, in which the future senator wrote of his long search to connect with his Kenyan father and heritage, has spent time on the bestseller lists.
Frank Holz, an official of Democrats Abroad in Manila, said he had noticed more interest in the US elections this year.
Although Republicans traditionally outnumber Democrats in the Philippines, he pointed out that ”because of the issues involved and the uniqueness of the candidates, people are more engaged.”
There is no voting centre in China but Simon Doyle (41) a businessman from Illinois who usually votes Republican, said he had never seen so much coverage overseas of a US election and ”is a little sick of it”.
”I’ve submitted a Super Tuesday ballot for the Illinois primary,” he said.
Super Tuesday states account for more than half the Democratic delegates and almost half of Republican delegates for their party conventions later this year, which formally nominate candidates for November’s presidential vote.
John McCain enjoys a commanding lead over his rivals in the battle for the Republican nomination while a clutch of new polls show the Democratic race a neck-and-neck struggle between Clinton and Obama. ‒ Sapa-AFP