As US presidential contestants race to the finish line the world looks on with bated breath, writes Ibrahim Nafie American voters go to the polls on Tuesday to choose their next president as well as a third of senators, all their representatives and state governors. International attention has been riveted to the presidential campaign, with many opinion polls conducted in other countries asking respondents who they would vote for -- Bush or Kerry -- if they had the chance. Given the major global issues that seem to hinge on the outcome of these elections the obsession is understandable; even in the US this is the first presidential campaign since the end of the Cold War in which foreign policy issues have overshadowed domestic political and economic issues. Even so, many analysts perceive little difference between the Republican and Democratic candidates' foreign policy, or at least on questions such as Afghanistan, Iraq and the Arab- Israeli conflict. Nevertheless, world leaders, along with the rest of the global public, will probably be as transfixed as American voters by the returns on election day. Indeed, many decision-making centres around the world have deferred crucial decisions until they learn who will be the next US president. Although attention will focus on the presidential elections, the results of other polls that day will also be crucial to both domestic and foreign policy. Such are the dynamics of the checks and balances between the executive and legislative branches that much is contingent upon whether or not the legislature is controlled by the same party as the president's. The American electorate tends to keep an even keel between the two branches of government by voting in a legislature that is dominated by the president's rival party. The current legislature is an exception to the general rule, with 51 out of the 100 Senate seats and 229 out of the House's 435 seats controlled by the Republicans. To confuse things for international observers, the US president is not, in fact, elected by direct popular vote but by the so-called Electoral College. The 548 votes of this body are distributed among states in proportion to population. Or, to look at it another way, theoretically the number of Electoral College members for each state is equivalent to the number of its members in the House of Representatives plus its two senators. California, for example, has 55 Electoral College votes, whereas Montana, Wyoming, Delaware, Vermont and Alaska have only three each. In between we find states such as Georgia, New Jersey and North Carolina with 15 each. In most states the candidate that wins the majority of the popular vote in that state wins all of that state's Electoral College votes. This system gives certain states key importance, as was demonstrated in the presidential elections of 2000. In this case, Bush succeeded in carrying Florida by a hair's breadth, which gave him just enough Electoral College votes to top his Democratic rival, Al Gore, in spite of the fact that the latter had won a majority of the popular vote. Today, opinion polls show the contestants in a neck-to-neck. On the basis of party affiliation it is estimated that Bush, as a Republican, will secure 208 Electoral College votes as opposed to 179 for Kerry. However, this by no means suggests that Bush has the election in his pocket. In order to win a candidate needs 270 Electoral College votes and 151 remain undecided. They will swing one way or the other depending on developments within the next few days. In his campaign Democratic candidate John Kerry concentrated on the fact, now confirmed by exhaustive investigations and on the ground inspections in Iraq, that the Bush administration fed the American people a pack of lies and misinformation about Iraqi WMD, links between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda and Iraqi involvement in the 11 September attacks on the US. Moreover, so rash and headstrong was this administration in making an unjustified detour in the fight against terrorism that it plunged into Iraq against the will of the international community and without a proper plan or the necessary resources for the post-operational phase. The result is the quagmire in which American forces are embroiled today and an America more isolated in the world than ever before. These were no mean failures on the part of the head of state and the commander- in-chief of the armed forces. Not that the Kerry candidacy is without shortcomings, among them the fact that he voted for the war. The Republicans, naturally, seized upon this to portray Kerry as someone who vacillates, the implication being that he lacks the strength and resolve needed to lead the US in its battle against terrorism. On the terrorism issue another factor works in favour of the Republican incumbent. Although Bush's policies have exacerbated the problems they set out to solve, alienated America's friends and allies and raised the temperature of anti-American hatred throughout the world, there is a strong feeling in US public opinion -- which the Republicans are assiduously feeding -- that it would be dangerous to change the occupant of the Oval Office at this particular time. To do so, they argue, would tell America's enemies that it was losing its resolve in its war against terror. The current American presidential electoral contest is one of the closest, toughest and most vicious ever. The contestants are snapping and snarling at one another while trying to charm and cajole those blocks of voters who might just give them that vital lead in this closely tied race. What will settle the score one way or the other are the voters who only make up their minds at the last moment, which is what makes the next few days so critical.
