Tight American election transfixes world, fuels fears over U.S. democracy

Across the world, viewers watched returns trickle in as the race between Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden remained undecided. Financial markets were choppy in the absence of a conclusive result.

The two rivals wrangling for leadership of the world’s largest economy and its most powerful military have presented deeply contrasting visions for the United States’ role internationally. Trump has charted a more unilateral approach that has eschewed alliances and international agreements, while Biden has promised a return to America’s more traditional role — something many of its foes and rivals would not welcome.

European media outlets led their websites with headlines suggesting the United States was on the brink of collapse.

“America looks into the abyss with close scrutiny and Trump’s threat to go to the Supreme Court,” read one headline in Spain’s El País newspaper. “Trump wants to go to the Supreme Court, but offers no meaningful grounds,” wrote the German newsweekly Der Spiegel. “The troubling spectacle wouldn’t be as worrying if at the heart of the pushed-to-the-extreme tension weren’t, simply, democracy,” offered one opinion piece in France’s Le Monde.

“Donald Trump hasn’t lost, but then again, Joe Biden hasn’t won. Rule nothing out, except maybe optimism,” opinion columnist Marina Hyde wrote in Britain’s Guardian newspaper under the headline “OK, America, so what the hell happens now?”

“This is a very explosive situation,” she said on German television channel ZDF. “This is a situation that can lead to a constitutional crisis in the U.S., as experts are rightly saying. And it is something that must cause us great concern.”

Britain’s opposition leader, Keir Starmer, said it was not for one candidate in the U.S. election to decide when vote-counting stops.

“Whatever the results, will the prime minister join me in saying that it’s not for a candidate to decide which votes do and don’t count or when to stop counting? The next president must be the free and fair choice of the American people,” he said in parliamentary question time. Johnson declined to answer, saying the government did not comment on the elections of allies.

British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said Britain has full confidence in the U.S. system of checks and balances, and he called for patience.

“We need to be patient and wait and see who wins the US election,” he tweeted. “Important the process is given sufficient time to reach a conclusion.”

That confidence was not shared by his colleagues to the north. Nicola Sturgeon, first minister of Scotland, said that the hours and days ahead were crucial “for the integrity of US democracy,” while Finland’s former prime minister, Alexander Stubb, called the election “a stress test” for American democracy. “I still want to believe in resilience of its democratic institutions, but am worried about the speech that we just heard from @realDonaldTrump,” he wrote on Twitter.

Penny Wong, a leading opposition lawmaker in Australia, urged that democracy be allowed to take its course and for all votes to be counted. “It’s in Australia’s interest that America remains a credible, stable democracy,” she tweeted. Malcolm Turnbull, Australia’s former conservative prime minister, simply said, “Count every vote.”

Some Europeans worried that the uncertainty was sure to play into the hands of America’s adversaries. “The champagne corks are popping in Moscow and Beijing,” tweeted Jörg Wojahn, the European Commission’s top official in Germany.

One senior European security official said he feared that Russia and China would “misuse” the time before the inauguration if there is turbulence in Washington. “Everybody worries,” the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss security concerns.

If Trump is reelected, global affairs could be far more unstable, said Carl Bildt, a former Swedish prime minister. “The world sort of survived four years with a somewhat restrained Trump. But all the ‘adults’ are gone. A world with a triumphant Trump could well be a different thing,” he wrote on Twitter.

Trump does have his supporters in Europe, including the leaders of Slovenia and Hungary, who have expressed hopes for his reelection. “It’s pretty clear that American people have elected @realDonaldTrump @Mike_Pence for #4moreyears,” tweeted Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jansa.

Far-right leaders in Europe hoped that a Trump victory would also give them a boost. France’s Marine Le Pen told the CNews broadcaster that a Trump win would be “better for France” because he was for “the return of nations, for the return of patriotism, for the return of borders.” Le Pen is expected to be a formidable contender in France’s 2022 presidential election.

Stock markets seesawed Wednesday as uncertainty mounted over the election result and the chances of a contested outcome rose.

Shares had started the week strongly as investors bet that a decisive win by Biden and the Democrats could pave the way for another economic stimulus package. But U.S. S&P 500 index futures dipped sharply after Trump prematurely claimed victory and threatened to take the contest to the Supreme Court.

That raised the specter of prolonged uncertainty. The dip, however, was relatively short-lived, as markets steadied once again.

Bob Shea, chief executive at TrimTabs Asset Management in New York, told Reuters that people were defaulting toward the view that “Trump is good for the market, so why not just buy now and cut to the chase.”

Asian markets were also volatile. The uncertainty sent traders toward safe havens of bonds and the U.S. dollar.

Regardless of the winner, the protracted battle over results and some of Trump’s statements seem to have damaged the image of U.S. democracy in the eyes of some commentators and invited comparisons with disputed contests in developing nations.

Oliver Dickson, a radio broadcaster in South Africa’s biggest city, Johannesburg, called Trump’s premature declaration of victory “extraordinary” but “unsurprising to African political pundits.”

“The world predicted that. In Africa, that’s nothing new. Election rigging — essentially what Trump is doing — is a long-standing practice over here,” he added. “When a democracy is being hijacked, only its institutions can rescue it.”

In India, the world’s largest democracy where hundreds of millions of votes were tallied within hours during last year’s national elections, the slow counting drew some amused responses. “Looks like America needs to learn the art of counting from India,” quipped a leading anchor. One journalist hailed India’s election commission, an autonomous body tasked with conducting elections, and called the U.S. elections “shambolic.”

Russian State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin said the election proved that American democracy was not a standard to be followed, adding, “Nobody here would approve of such an approach.”

Alexei Pushkov, chairman of the Russian Federation Council Commission on Information Policy, said Trump’s better-than-predicted performance set the scene for chaos. He said Biden had “failed to establish a decisive lead, and now Trump is not going to ‘give up the victory.’ A sharp conflict is guaranteed.”

Ming Jinwei, deputy foreign editor of China’s state-run Xinhua News Agency, meanwhile, described the United States as “without hope.”

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In Hong Kong, however, the pro-democracy crowd was firmly behind another term for Trump. Many of the activists who see Trump as their savior in their fight against Beijing were cheering on the president.

A group of Trump supporters in Hong Kong filmed a YouTube video in support of his campaign, saying Trump was the only one who could fight the Chinese Communist Party. A local YouTuber, who goes by the name Stormtrooper, told his 15,000 viewers that Biden and his running mate, Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.) would be more inclined to help the Chinese government than Trump would.

One of the countries most affected by the Trump presidency has been Iran, after the United States pulled out of a 2015 nuclear deal and imposed crippling sanctions on the country.

President Hassan Rouhani, however, reiterated on Wednesday the country’s stance that it was not important who won the U.S. election but rather that the United States respect international treaties.

Trump has said he wants to negotiate a new treaty with Iran that would curtail its nuclear and its ballistic missile programs, which Tehran has categorically rejected.

Dixon reported from Moscow, Dou from Seoul, and Birnbaum from Riga, Latvia. Shibani Mahtani and Theodora Yu in Hong Kong; Isabelle Khurshudyan in Moscow; Niha Masih and Taniya Dutta in New Delhi; Paul Schemm in Dubai; Lyric Li and Liu Yang in Beijing; and Simon Denyer in Tokyo contributed to this report.