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The poll doesn't surprise me. There is alot of anti-Bush sentiment (present company excluded) even among out Allies.
Gotta love the way this country is just turning into a bunch of politically over-corrected whining liberals...
I'm in the 2% too. I still think the USA in general lacks sufficient awareness of the goings on in the rest of the world (e.g. NONE of my non-blog reading American friends had even heard about the Sudan crisis a few months back) but at least Bush is making an attempt at learning and engaging with it.
John and Chris:
Thanks for making me feel not QUITE so lonely. After all, I could be living in England (or France!)
About the "personally opposed, but" bit on social issues, can I vent?
I grew up among Democrats and pretty much all of my family today are Democratic, as are the vast majority of my colleagues. (As you can tell from the edu on email address.) So I think I know a little about how Democrats actually think about issues. Yet I have not known a SINGLE person in my life who supported the legal right to abortion who woud not think that an unmarried teenage girl would be crazy NOT to have an abortion. I have never known a SINGLE person who supported same-sex "marriages" who thinks of men with a homosexual orientation trying to stay celibate as anything other than self-hating weirdos. Maybe such people who support legal abortion or civil unions, but personally hold to the Christian position on these issues do exist. But I've never met a single one of them. Like the left likes to say, "The personal is political" . . .
(This is a corrected post. Could you delete the earlier one?)
There is another choice beside the Republicans, viz., the Constitution Party, sort of equivalent to a Christian Libertarian party. I didn't want to vote this year for a man who wouldn't protect the unborn, nor was I inclined to support a man who pre-emptively bombs them, so my conscience was pleased to "throw away" its vote to the aforementioned alternative. But since I voted by absentee ballot, it's a fair question whether my vote will even be factored in. But that's what a close election is good for.
I have pondered Kerry's comments to the effect that he would like to reach a new status-quo in which terrorism is a nuisance. Looking back, he was always better as an investigator, and as a sort of ready voice in opposition to wars of all kinds. It's always seemed to me that over here we need folks like that in Congress - balance, don't you know. Why he even wants to be president, however, is beyond me. Oh, and I live in a part of Ohio that is overwhelmingly pro-Kerry, so much so that it causes stunned amazement when folks find out I'm a Republican. Of course, the Republicans are annoyed to find that I think Bush a fiscal liberal...
Oh, why can't it be the day after already?
Christians in the U .S. have been successful in making abortion more of a key issue in the American Presidential election. In terms of promoting Christian values and creating a culture of life, I'm wondering why it is that, by contrast, support for the death penalty (both Bush and Kerry support it; Nader's against) seems such a non-issue.
I'm also looking at what's happening in Florida, and thinking that we need to resist the introduction of electronic voting in the U.K. Our system, which leaves a clear paper trail, works without significant legal challenge, and is widely seen as non-partisan. It ain't broke - so why should we fix it? I'm sure we could send independent election observers and consultants over to the U.S.A. if they would only ask - it could be under the auspices of the U.N. if that would make it seem fairer 
To be fair, there's a far greater irony in being pro-abortion but anti-death penalty than the other way round.
Two reasons why I suspect the death penalty's a non-issue in the US:
(i) public opinion on the issue is sufficiently strong that the political class is unable to override it (unlike in the UK, where the majority opinion in favour of the death penalty is routinely ignored) (FWIW, I'm against re-introducing the death penalty in the UK, but not against the death penalty in principle - aargh, I'm sounding like John Kerry on abortion!);
(ii) as I recall, the death penalty is recognised as an issue for individual states to decide upon (provided that "cruel and unusual" punishment is avoided - quite why that allows for the electric chair but excludes the gallows, is anyone's guess). Abortion, on the other hand, was taken out of the hands of the states by Roe v Wade. Hence it becomes a federal political issue and central to presidential campaigns.
As for electronic voting - tell that to John Prescott, not to me! I absolutely, wholeheartedly agree with you. Pencil stub on a piece of paper in a polling station - that's voting. Anything else (postal-only ballots, even - so help us - voting by text-message or email) is just market research.
The best suggestion I ever came across re electoral observers was when the Guardian diary tried to get Cuba, North Korea and Albania to oversee Labour's internal election process for its mayoral candidate a few years back...
John,
It's Tuesday morning here in Ohio. My husband is really worried for Bush. Bush is looking fairly solid in our state, but the other swing states appear to be favoring Kerry, according to the polls.
Then there's all the reports about voter fraud. . .
Trying not to stress out,
Mary Brazier
I hope it doesn't sound to shocking (I know this is one issue where European and American Christians don't generally see eye to eye), but for me the death penalty for premeditated murder is simply another basic Christian issue. If you're against it on principle, I can't vote for you. Genesis 9:6 settles it: "Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for in the image of God, God has made man." This is part of the covenant of Noah applicable to all mankind and superseding Gen. 4:17. But what about forgiveness, people ask? Forgiveness means full and free pardon. To sentence some one to life in prison is no more forgiving than to sentence that person to execution. I like pardons and believe both Clinton and Bush have not used it enough; but that is entirely apart from the issue of sentencing. But what about abortion? It's very simple: guilt vs. innocenece. That's the issue.
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