NOTOrmally, an American election means results in the middle of the night, a book by Christine Ockrent, interviews with Paul Auster or Douglas Kennedy at breakfast to say that they do not understand anything about this country, quinquas and sixty years old, former correspondents in the United States on all television sets to explain what elections the news will not look like, and Hubert Védrine in a broom wagon afterwards to invite people not to rejoice too quickly because they should not be dupes of the Americans.
But this year, these experts from the Americas were overtaken by an army of 60 million political scientists, trained on the job and very noisy. For a long time, being interested in the American elections was a sign of belonging to happy globalization. You also had to be a bit of a geek to monitor what was going on in Iowa. In 2020, thanks to the amount of data available, each person with a screen was able to gain skills as quickly as Gérard Araud, the former French ambassador to the United States who became pundit (commentator).
When Donald Trump wondered on Twitter since when the media allowed themselves to crown the winner of the election, we could answer him from Eure-et-Loir: “Since 1848, the Associated Press has been doing it. “
Parents of school leavers could be heard discussing the possible vote pool for Trump in Maricopa County. On social media, French people who had never set foot in Florida told correspondents in the United States that they should pay more attention to the distribution of Cuban and Puerto Rican electorates in Broward County, in the north. of Miami-Dade.
When Donald Trump wondered on Twitter since when the media allowed themselves to crown the winner of the election, we could answer him from Eure-et-Loir: “Since 1848, the Associated Press has been doing it. “ Guillaume Rozier, social media star for his Covid-19 hospitalization curves, spent his night recalculating the percentage of Georgia’s vote gap (the Covid-19 and the US elections have a lot of data in common). open). As for the French correspondents in the United States, they heard more opinions from their French friends on the American election than they were asked questions (on the other hand, we still lack specialists in Nagorno-Karabakh).
How do we recognize them?
They explained on Wednesday morning why America remained fundamentally Trumpist and on Saturday afternoon why it was throwing him out. They wrote enough Tweet during the campaign that they could find one announcing what is happening. They took a closer look at the results of Nebraska’s Second District, which they would have struggled to place on a map a month earlier. They have a more precise idea of the Pennsylvania map than of the date of the next regional in France. Their children know how many electors there are in every swing state American. And they consider that they should be able to vote in the American elections given the consequences of their election here.
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