Europe’s divided expectations on US election
Polls suggest that if European nations were voting in the U.S. election, Hillary Clinton would win in a landslide. Governments across the region are paying close attention and assessing how they will work with the next administration, including one that would be led by Donald Trump.
The Republican candidate has found sympathy among a significant segment of Europe’s population, both in migrant-wary Eastern Europe and in Western Europe, where anti-immigrant, anti-EU advocates in Germany, France and Britain are hoping a Trump victory will bolster their causes.
Establishment for Clinton
But it is the concerns about the new American leadership’s willingness to remain engaged with Europe that is tipping the scales in favor of Clinton, in the eyes of the European establishment.
“I admire her strategic thinking and her strong commitment to the trans-Atlantic partnership,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel told the newspaper Bild am Sonntag earlier this year.
Merkel’s opinion reflects that of many Europeans who see Clinton as sharing priorities that are trademarks of European classical liberalism: a commitment to free trade, a strong NATO, state-funded health care, and opposition to Brexit and other movements that threaten the integrity of the EU and its vision of a region without borders.
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