Arab public opinion is ‘ignored’ in US — but here’s why it matters

Simon Anholt

JEDDAH: An Arab News/YouGov poll, published this week, put citizens of the Middle East and North Africa in US voters’ shoes, helping gauge regional public opinion ahead of next week’s deeply divisive presidential election.
The poll found Hillary Clinton to be the most popular candidate among the 3,017 Arab respondents — although almost half of those questioned said they would shun both leading presidential candidates.
Very few people living in the Arab world will, of course, actually get a chance to vote. But one prominent UK-based policy adviser says that all global citizens should have a voice in elections — no matter where they are being held.
Simon Anholt is behind The Global Vote, a website that allows people to “vote” in selected public elections including the Nov. 8 poll for the next US president.
The votes cast on the website will not, of course, be counted in the real election. But Anholt said the site is a reflection of his belief that elections — of political leaders or even company executives — should take into account the broader international repercussions they bring.
“People around the world need to have a say in other countries’ elections,” Anholt told Arab News.
People from 130 countries have so far had their say on the US election in “The Global Vote” — although Anholt said he will not reveal the full results until shortly before the election day itself.
Here Anholt described how domestic politics is now a global affair — and why Arab public opinion counts in the upcoming US election.

Q: Do you think Arab public opinion on the US election is being taken into account, or is it being ignored?
A: In the US, international public opinion is broadly ignored. In fact, a lot of Americans get very aggressive when they’re reminded that the world is watching them and they’re interested. I get quite a lot of hate mail from Americans because of The Global Vote, saying, “You’re trying to interfere in our sovereign decisions, in our democracy.” And I think Arab public opinion is ignored by the majority of Americans. It’s ignored because America is an imperial power. And imperial powers, as I know from the experience of my own country in past ages, very quickly develop a habit of thinking the rest of the world is of secondary or tertiary importance. But Arab public opinion in the Middle East is of course of significant importance.

Q. Why is that — and where does The Global Vote come into it?
A: The main principle that I’m trying to communicate is that we live in an age of advanced globalization. And that has created massive interdependency between countries, and endless connections. Almost everything that happens in one country is going to have an impact, somehow, on people in other countries. We still of course treat elections as entirely domestic affairs. And yet the consequences of those elections are going to be felt by millions or billions of people who don’t have a say in the election. The most obvious case is the United States. Whoever US citizens over the age of 18 vote for on Nov. 8 will be given the nuclear codes. And so the remainder of the seven billion people on the planet are basically sitting back and waiting for these Americans to make the decision. And I wanted to draw people’s attention to how peculiar that really is. To ask the question, “Isn’t it time that, when we elect our leaders, we also at least gave some consideration to how they are going to behave in the international domain?“
Q: Would a global vote ever actually work in practice, or is this an academic exercise?
A: I’m not saying that all elections should be global in reality, because it wouldn’t work and it would put impossible demands on the politicians. But what I am saying is that — if populations, politicians and the media — were to change the culture of elections slightly, and start thinking in a more complete way about the global implications of who gets elected and how they behave, then we wouldn’t need a global vote, because the domestic votes would work for the world. One thing I really would like to see, though, is that I think it would be great if domestic voters voted for their own head of states and head of government, but there was an international vote for the minister of foreign affairs. I think that would be fun.

Q: The recent Arab News/YouGov poll put the Arab public into US voters’ shoes, asking them how they feel about the presidential election. What was your reaction to that?
A: These kinds of polls really help, because they encourage people to think outwards, and to think more globally, and to think about the international consequences of things. So I think it’s great. But what I would love to see is, after the US election is over, more polls looking at more elections in more countries.

Q: Half of Arab citizens wouldn’t bother voting were they given the chance, according to our poll. Does that surprise you?
A: It doesn’t surprise me. Part of the reason why so many people — particularly younger people — don’t feel excited by the idea of voting is because they don’t feel that it’s going to change anything. They feel that there are hidden powers that decide everything, and that elections — and even to some extent, politics — are just a kind of smokescreen and that the real power occurs elsewhere.

Q: What kind of response has there been to The Global Vote in the Arab world?
A: I haven’t opened the ballot box yet so I have no idea. I know I am getting votes from the Middle East, I can’t tell you how many and I can’t tell you which way people are voting. But reading around the issue, looking at social media, I think a lot of people assume that Donald Trump must be universally unpopular all over the world, and that if the US election was put to a global vote, then Hillary Clinton would win hands down. And it’s actually really not so simple at all. In a lot of countries and a lot of cultures, the Trump worldview finds a lot of sympathy.

Q: That’s interesting given our poll finding that, despite Trump being unpopular in the Arab world, there is much support for his policies. Does that surprise you?
A: I think a lot of people hear what he says about America interfering less around the world, and they welcome it. So they may not like him as a character, and they may see him as being unpredictable and dangerous. But at the least they say they won’t have so much trouble from America, that the US won’t be sticking its nose into their affairs if (Trump is) the next president. Because he has explicitly promised not to do so. Where as Clinton’s (approach is that) “US democracy is our gift to the world, and our duty is to be the world’s policeman.”