How PA’s electoral importance became a focal point for foreign media
"You won't believe this," my Bulgarian-born husband called out from our Philadelphia living room on Tuesday morning. "My entire Bulgarian Facebook feed is about Pennsylvania – which counties matter most, how the Electoral College works ..."
I was shocked – but not surprised. Most Pennsylvanians would struggle to locate Bulgaria on a map, let alone name its president. But like much of the world today, the tiny Eastern European nation is obsessed not only with America's nail-biter election, but specifically with the commonwealth's role in determining its outcome.
They're hardly alone. From Kyiv to Krakow, Bombay to Brazil, foreigners are parsing Pennsylvania and its all-important Electoral College votes right along with Steve Kornacki, NBC's energetic analyst.
There's seemingly no detail too local, too foreign or too obscure for onlookers six or seven time zones away. "Breaking: Elon Musk wins landmark lawsuit," trumpeted Visegrád 24 , a controversial but influential X account with shadowy Polish roots, early Tuesday. The post went on to explain the role of various Pennsylvania legal figures, including Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, in determining the legality of Musk's $1 million voter sweepstakes.
Meanwhile, the Kyiv Independent has been filling in Ukrainians at home and across the diaspora about the proud role their brethren could play in the Keystone State's ballot count. "Pennsylvania's Ukrainian community could swing the state in the upcoming election," wrote Gary Wasserson last Friday in a piece that ricocheted around Ukrainian social media accounts. Wasserson, one of 120,000 Pennsylvanians of Ukrainian heritage, noted that the community is larger than the 81,000-vote margin that Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden won the state by in 2020.
On CNN Brasil, political experts recently weighed in on whether Pennsylvania is " the American Minas Gerais " – a reference to that Southern Brazilian state's outsize role in determining national outcomes south of the Equator.
And in between updates on the historic rainfall inundating much of Spain, El Observador España – a news website with a Uruguayan URL and a Madrid location pin on X – keeps its Spanish-language readership up to date on "el Cinturón Latino de Pensilvania" (the Latino belt of Pennsylvania).
Zooming in on the potentially king-or-queen-making role of Hazleton, a city of barely 30,000 in Luzerne County – two-thirds of whom are Latinos – El Observador waxed rhapsodic about "el mítico Rust Belt de Estados Unidos" and its potential to tilt the entire election.
To this American journalist, the degree of foreign focus on minutiae that even legions of Americans tune out can seem strange, even voyeuristic. But many abroad claim solid rationales for obsessively tracking, say, Luzerne County's Latino turnout or GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump's numbers in the Philadelphia suburbs.
To state the obvious: America remains the lone world superpower. Surreal though it may sound, a five-figure vote differential in the commonwealth could very well determine the future of the postwar liberal order, the transatlantic alliance and course of Russia's war in Ukraine, to name top concerns for many. Few matters are more important to the millions of displaced Ukrainians rebuilding their lives in the diaspora, the Polish towns transformed by that refugee influx, and the Western Europeans who've seen gas and grocery prices skyrocket due to the war's energy disruptions.
Then there are the nations on Russia's border who fear that, if NATO support falters under Trump, their sovereignty could be at stake. And the myriad contested territories around the globe, from Taiwan to Kosovo, who fear a domino effect if Putin's success emboldens his fellow autocrats.
The Middle East, embroiled in its most severe turmoil in a generation, is another region of international interest. And historically, America's role in Middle Eastern geopolitics has been decisive.
That explains why, in Israel, social media was buzzing today about legal battles involving the Dauphin County Board of Elections. Lahav Harkov, a prominent Israeli political journalist, reported today that several Israeli Pennsylvanians found out their absentee ballots are the focus of a legal challenge from supporters of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump – and were ordered to appear, on three days' notice, in a Harrisburg courthouse 6,000 miles away.
Of course, a good deal of the fascination with Pennsylvania and the election can be chalked up to old-fashioned sensationalism. The German news outlet DW, in particular, has specialized in gossipy details: Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris "spoke at the famous steps at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where the movie 'Rocky' was shot," gushed a recent piece . "She called herself the underdog like Rocky and said she was ready to 'climb to victory.'"
Upon reading that, my husband's eyebrows rose skeptically. It sounded like propaganda, something Eastern Europeans know well after enduring a half-century of communism. Other aspects of America's recent politics have resonated uneasily, too – like the hundreds of lawsuits preemptively challenging the integrity of Pennsylvania's elections, part of a larger web of online misinformation of the sort that is all too familiar to Eastern Europeans.
"In Bulgaria, we're used to parties questioning the election results, accusing their rivals of corruption," he reflected. "But not in America." That, he added, partly explains why his compatriots are so fascinated by the commonwealth's every headline.
It also explains why, after 20 years, he finally became an American, casting his first-ever ballot in Philadelphia this morning. This year, more than ever, Oggi – like much of the world – knows exactly what's at stake.
