Why is the British media so obsessed with the US primaries?

Does such detailed coverage amount to media madness – or a hangover from the past when there was supposed to be a special relationship between our two countries? By Raymond Snoddy.

When I presented Newswatch, the BBC’s accountability programme, every time the US primaries got under way in came the complaints – and it still goes on today.

Why is the BBC so obsessed with the minutia of small numbers of voters placing their votes in the snow of obscure US states such as Iowa?

How much has it cost to send such large journalistic BBC teams to cover primaries that will run for months before the real vote in the autumn? Do BBC journalists just like any excuse to visit the US?

In another related point, some viewers always contrasted the BBC’s never-ending interest in the politics of the US with much less attention paid to important elections in Europe on our own doorstep.

At least this time ‘the Europe is being neglected’ argument can scarcely be advanced in the run-up to the Brexit referendum.

US election complaints to Newswatch were up there with reporters standing outside Downing Street in the dark and rain in completely unnecessary live broadcasts, or any grammatical solecism spotted by eagle-eyed viewers.

The BBC interest is matched by the serious papers, as seen by the two-page spread in The Times to mark the New Hampshire primary.
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As a result we can debate the merits of Cuban American Senator Marco Rubio, the Ohio Governor John Kasich, not to mention Chris Christie of New Jersey, Ted Cruz from Texas or the possibility that former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg – who is worth $37 billion – might enter the race as an independent anti-verbal abuse candidate.

And that’s before we get to Donald J. Trump, another billionaire; Hillary Clinton and the Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, an unusual politician brave enough to call himself a socialist in America.

Thanks to The Times we now know that Dixville Notch in the very north of New Hampshire is allowed to open its polling booth in a local hotel at midnight for what turned out to be a total of nine voters.

All four democratic votes went to Bernie Sanders while the Republican vote was split with three for Kasich and two for Trump.

This less than perfect statistical sample is not as irrelevant as it seems, because according to The Times no-one has ever made it to the White House without taking Dixville Notch on the way.

The Daily Mail, it has to be said, is too intent at the moment on spreading anti-European Union propaganda and warning of millions of migrants yet to come, to become too obsessed about the US primaries.

Does such detailed coverage amount to media madness and a hangover from the past when there was supposed to be a special relationship between our two countries? After all the intense interest in the US electoral processes in the UK, discussing the relative merits of politicians who are barely household names in their own states, is hardly reciprocated.

Anyone who has ever visited the US quickly realises that Britain, or indeed the rest of the world, barely gets a TV mention – short of a major terrorist attack, earthquake or tsunami.

And yet for all that there is something endlessly beguiling about how the world’s most influential, if not its largest democracy, chooses its supreme leader.

There is something appealing about the race beginning in the wintry wastes of Iowa where candidates try to build up the momentum to take them on to the far more important states of Florida, California and New York.

The political circus moving on from city to city inevitably turns it into a media circus where the most surprising candidates can cut through and get traction while the wheels often come off the dead certs. Remember an obscure first term Senator from Chicago called Obama? Or Jimmy Carter, the peanut farmer from Plains, Georgia?

To British sensibility it seems odd that someone totally lacking in any Government experience, who has not served any sort of apprenticeship, could ever be seen as a plausible Presidential candidate.

Most have at least served in Congress, or been a mayor or a state governor.

And then there is Donald Trump, the property billionaire making a virtue of knowing nothing about government.

Every time he opens his mouth we think warm, smug thoughts about our political system.

Things may be bad in Westminster but it is rare to hear anyone say all Muslims should be prevented from coming into the country or argue for the island equivalent of building a fence the whole way across the country to block the arrival of Mexicans, who according to Trump are pretty much all criminals anyway.

It is very tempting to take a superficial look at the polls and the more uncritical media coverage and tee up a Presidential election between Trump and Sanders.

That would be a difficult race to call. How would the American equivalent of Jeremy Corbyn manage against someone who is manifestly bonkers?

There is a real chance that the 74 year-old Corbyn – sorry, Sanders – will tap into the disaffection of the disadvantaged in a society where the gulf between rich and poor grows ever wider.

Careful reading of the British media coverage suggests he will benefit from an unwillingness shown by many Democrats to put Hillary Clinton in the White House following a “lacklustre” campaign so far.

Does this mean that 69-year-old Trump could get the job by default because Sanders is unelectable in the way that Corbyn is unelectable as Prime Minister?

Probably not: the Republicans will most likely send in the men in white coats before Trump gets that far, but where is the credible alternative – particularly if Bloomberg adds to the confusion by running on an independent ticket.

Put your money on the 44-year-old Florida Senator Marco Rubio. If the US can’t have its first women President just yet, wouldn’t the first Cuban American Presidential candidate have sufficient news value?

Then again never forget the good voters of Dixville Notch and they seem very big on Kasich.

You see how easy it is to get obsessed by the US primaries courtesy of the British media, particularly the BBC.