The Skeptic Next Door

I am fortunate that I have frequent opportunities to travel. One of the things that I find fascinating is the schism between the America’s self image and the image held by those outside the country. On the one hand is the, “America is the greatest country in the world” mantra and the insane competition to buy more stars and stripes paraphernalia to prove that one is more patriotic than the neighbors.  On the other hand, the experience of being mooned by young Japanese boys who ran away laughing “Ha Ha Americans” or having older men in the Seoul subway system spit on the ground while glaring at me.

When it comes to the presidential election, many non-Americans would like to vote for president.  If this is really the most important job in the world should not the world get a voice.

The Economist magazine has been running a global voting site. Unlike the US polls where Obama and McCain are closely matched, the rest of the world has been overwhelmingly casting votes for Obama.  Currently 9115 to 203.  McCain is leading in less than a handful of countries.  At his strongest, in Algeria, the Congo and Iraq, McCain is barely ahead of Obama.

Clearly this is not a scientific study but it demonstrates a major difference between America’s and the rest of the world’s view of the election.

Screen Capture from Economist

[ Insert sound of needle across record ]

… Well that is the way this post was suppose to go.

It is not just the rest of the world that can vote in this poll.  People in the United States can vote as well and they are voting 81% for Obama.

USA Screen Capture from Econimist.com

Huston we have a problem.

There are two obvious problems.  As previously mentioned this is not a scientific study.  The sample of people submitting votes in the United States is not representative of the overall population, so it is unlikely that Economist readers in the rest of the world are representative either.

The second obvious problem is confirmation bias.  I was selecting nonscientific data that supported my hypothesis.  Bad skeptic.

A third not so obvious problem is that the Economist website infers the voters country from the network information it receives from your browser.  I have no idea how accurate this is. Probably pretty good in general.  However, people in some parts of the world such as China may habitually run their web access through an anonymizer, in an effort to thwart network censors.

Web surveys are fun but not very reliable.

I started writing this, then noticed the US data problem, as a result I almost did not post it.  However, it is better to publish problems than to hide them.  At least my anecdotes about Japan and Korea are real assuming my recollections are correct.