On Wednesday, November 7th, my exchange friends and I watched the election results from a TV lounge inside one of our residential halls. In all, there were fifteen of us from five different countries. Since Singapore is thirteen hours ahead of the US, we all met up around 9 AM to watch the news reports as the polls closed.
When most of the news networks announced that President Obama had won, my friends were all extremely happy. Several of my Singaporean friends also were excited about the results of the election. However, what I found most interesting was the fact that people were willing to skip classes and tutorials to watch the results with us.
Most of my friends were extremely curious to figure out how elections work in the US in terms of how the electoral college works, as well as what it means to be a majority in the House and Senate. Thus, a lot of the American students spent a majority of the morning explaining our political system, as well as how checks and balances work.
My professors that day also mentioned the elections in class; some of them were even willing to have discussions about the election throughout their lectures. My theatre professor managed to relate the election to class, which I thought was extremely interesting. One restaurant in Singapore also used the election results in their advertising; this particular restaurant had a huge cut out of President Obama stating, "Thank you! Come celebrate [here]!" Additionally, when I went to Cambodia and Indonesia earlier this year, several of the locals in those countries wanted President Obama to get re-elected for another term.
Overall, I believe that Singapore generally was excited to hear that President Obama was re-elected. While there were no major celebrations, there were plenty of Facebook status updates from Singaporean friends and other exchange friends expressing their happiness. Although I do wish I was in DC to rush to the White House with my friends, I had a great time watching the election results from the other side of the world!