So Samuel J prefers Obama to Romney, not news. He must be hanging out with too many of these American foreign service types he has been associating with. As he noted in the comments on a previous thread:

Most of the US foreign service strongly support Obama – they have been spreading horror stories about a likely Romney administration.

That’s extraordinary if true. And if that’s the case, there will need to be a wholesale cleanout of the lot. Washington house prices hopefully are about to fall to levels similar to prices in Detroit. But if we are talking about protectionism as the great bogey of a Romney administration, let me guide you to Romney’s No Apology.

The only successful way to overcome foreign advantage, however, is to create an advantage of your own – to innovate. And if you conclude that your competitor’s advantage is permanent and insurmoutable, the best course is to choose new paths and new products. Over the centuries, the siren songs of protectionism and isolationism have taken down some very impressive empires. (paperback edition: page 55)

Translation: Romney is opposed to protectionism. I might also mention the paragraph that follows since it also provides some insight into a Romney administration:

Some of these failed powers were weakened as well by wealth and spending that exceeded their own production – in other words, by easy money. The spoils of Ottoman pillage, the gold the Spanish stole from the Americas, and the tribute the Portuguese exacted from trade – all allowed each of these nations to live well in excess of their productivity. In the same way that inherited wealth can lead descendents to profligate spending and economic ruin, easy money weakened these nations’s willingness to work and invest.

I work under the assumption that most of those who visit this site – and write on this blog – want Romney to win and Obama to lose. I have no reason to think this is untrue but I should also recognise that it is not universally so. Romney is no protectionist, but if you are determined to find some reason not to vote for him that will do as well as anything else.

I have kept away from discussing polls in the American election because in the end it is the last thing that really matters and I don’t want to get my hopes too far up. Nevertheless, there is a value in seeing that one is not alone, that our side really can win and that another four years of Obama is not inevitable. So I offer this, not with my endorsement, but merely to remind all you American voters out there – the two dozen of you who read this site – not to forget to cast your vote. Who knows, as this article says, there may be a Republican tsunami on the way and you wouldn’t want to miss out on being part of this tidal wave of support for the 45th President of the United States:

According to a GOP analysis of early voting and absentee ballot requests provided to Secrets, the Democrats are turning out their most reliable, or so-called ‘high propensity voters’ than Republicans, leaving fewer for Election Day. The GOP is pushing weaker supporters to vote early, expecting high enthusiasm to drive their regular supporters to the polls next week.

‘Democrats are cannibalizing their high-propensity voters in advance of election day to get stories that they are winning,’ said a GOP analyst. ‘But in effect they are stealing from Peter, or Election Day, to pay Paul, or early voting.’ . . .

Even with the difference in turnout of loyal supporters, Gallup finds that among early voters, Romney is beating Obama 52 percent to 45 percent, though some state totals show an Obama advantage. Plus in states like North Carolina, Colorado and Iowa, the GOP has seen huge requests for last-minute absentee ballots this month.

And there is Sandy that will affect turnout and I am reliably informed (by my wife) that about a foot of snow (or did she say a metre) is expected in the midwest. This is the time for the broken-glass Republicans to show they really mean it – that they will crawl over broken glass to get to the polls to finally get rid of Obama.

And what is possibly the most remarkable part of this last week is that because of Sandy, it may even be impossible to know what’s going on since it is now impossible to survey people who are no longer contactable by phone. As with New York City itself, we are now all in the dark.

The BBC has done some polling around the world and it seems that Obama is the one everywhere with France leading in this wall of shame and Australia close behind. Obama has an incredible 68-7 lead amongst Australians.

But as I speculated at the time, were the same survey run in Israel, the results would be entirely different and so it has turned out, although the survey was not done by the BBC who did not want to spoil their statistics with this one very significant outlier. A survey reported in the Jerusalem Post has the Jewish population favouring Romney by 57.2% to 21.5% a ratio of near 3:1. A very unsurprising result. If anything it is surprising that a fifth of the Jewish population of Israel would support Obama.

But what may be the most interesting part about this survey is to find that the Arab population, while supporting Obama, is far less enthusiastic than the French and Australians. Amongst the Arab population, Romney picks up 15% of the vote to our 7% and Obama receives only 45% to our 67%.

You can read a more complete discussion of these statistics and pick up the link to the Jerusalem Post in an article I have just done for Quadrant Online.

This just in: “Obama dominates Romney in Russian opinion poll”

In a nationwide poll that tracked Russians’ political attitudes, a whopping 41 per cent of respondents said they want to see President Obama voted back into the White House, while just 8 per cent expressed preference for Republican challenger Mitt Romney.

Still, there are more in Australia than in Russia who support Obama. This election really is a Rorscharch test of political beliefs.

It’s about Obama’s auto bailout and how the Jeep, which has been sold to FIAT in Italy, will now build those Jeeps in China.

My favourite comment on the election in the last two days was from someone who knew Detroit was going to lose the World Series (which they did in four straight games) because they had been endorsed by Obama. As he explained, everything Obama supports screws up. As I say, a week to go.

Let us return briefly to that poll conducted by the BBC looking at the relative support for Mitt Romney versus Obama in the election next month. What you see in the chart is support for Romney in comparison with Obama in rank order of support for Romney. The country with the highest level of support for Romney is Kenya but even there it doesn’t reach 20%. In Australia the support for Romney is an almost non-existent 7%.

What I wrote on the earlier post was this:

For there to be virtually no appreciation of Romney anywhere in the world, and a preference for Obama, is quite surprising. I do note, however, that Israel was left off the list which I think unsurprising, given the left attitudes of the BBC, but it is an omission of quite some importance. Leaving the survey as it is makes it seem the entire world is of the same view, but including what I think would be the likely outcome in Israel would, if published, perhaps have a positive effect on Romney’s vote.

This omission has now been corrected in a poll undertaken in Israel by “Peace Index” poll and reported in The Jerusalem Post. That they were called “Peace Index Polls makes me a bit suspicious of their objectivity but even so we find the following which are completely different from the other poll results:

Asked ‘in terms of Israeli interests, who would be preferable to win the elections next month in the US,’ 57.2% of Israeli Jews said Romney, while only 21.5% said Obama.

It may be of some significance that the question is not structured in terms of who the respondent would vote for but in relation to Israeli interests. It is not impossible to imagine there would be some who would think that it would make no difference to Israel who won the American election but would nevertheless have preferred one of the candidates had that been asked directly. But in the absence of other information, there is almost a 3:1 preference for Romney as shown by this poll and over half the population is found in the Romney camp. Had the BBC included this result, it would have been a complete outlier in comparison with the countries they did survey but there is no surprise in the numbers. If there is any surprise, it is that the plurality is not larger than it is.

I also suspect, now that I see the Israeli result, something similar might have occurred had the same question been asked in Taiwan. I had a look to see if there was a Taiwanese result online somewhere but nothing came up. For some countries, the population in general actively realises that its own national defence is to a significant extent dependent on American foreign policy. And yet, and yet, South Korea, which would be inside the gulag within the year were the Americans not lined up along their border, support Obama just as strongly as the rest.