Where's Kerry? :S

I guess I'm not really in to this...

Ron Paul would definitely not be popular in Europe. Most Europeans have difficulty understanding the fervor with which he defends late 18th century economical and political principles, his extremely conservative social views (dislikes gays, atheism and evolution), not to mention we're generally happy with our "big governments" because they're run competently and actually serve the people.

I'm not sure if it's Hillary seriously being a bad candidate, or if the massive smear campaign against her is starting to affect me, but I like her less every day. Whatever the case, a lot of her popularity comes from being the wife of the former president (the last competent president as far as most people are concerned), and it's pretty safe Obama supporters are more often people who've looked into American politics more, just because still very easy to never have heard of him.

does people over there even have a clue who half of these people are?

ssj12:
Should they? I think it's pretty unreasonable to expect a regular guy from Sweden to be familiar with a substantial amount of the candidates in the US presidential elections. As nice as it would be for everyone to know everything about everything they talk about, it's generally agreed that everyone has the right to an opinion.

Not that most of the people who'll end up voting in these elections will know anything about half of the candidates anyway. =/

I would recommend all ultra-libertarians to read Karl Polanyis The Great Transformation, since it pretty well describes the consequences of a libertarian economy. I do understand that a lot of people are tired of the enormous trade balance deficit and the military spendings, but I don't know how good a new isolationist US would be for the world. Anyway, as I see it, the US cannot have a non interventionist policy as long as it is feeding the military industrial complex.

Same here, about Hillary that is. I have no freaking idea for whom I would vote if I lived in the US with the same political opionions that I have as a wierd Swede. Im probably so much left that I - like in the old school Atari games - would end up in the conservative camp. :) 

 The poll shows that we do know the candidates.

I'm in Europe (Belgium) and I think the US presidential elections are the funnest competition to watch. I follow them closely and probably know the candidates much better than the average American. Fwiw I'd choose Ron Paul if only because he would end the USA's foreign interventions. We'd all be glad with Obama too though; electing him would in one stroke repair much of the damage that 8 years of Bush has done to the USA's standing in the world. The 40% Clinton votes are probably from Swedes who don't follow the American elections; she's the only candidate who's internationally famous.

Anyway, as long as campaign donations from corporations and other special interests are allowed, American politics will remain completely screwed.

It's not that hard, really. Even most right-wing people in Sweden are to the left of US republicans.

In daily swedish newspapers the US primaries got 2-4 pages daily for the last couple of weeks.

Edit: also, Aftonbladet is quite to the left.

 I think the main reason is that the US was build by people who felt that the state was an evil opressing entity that should be kept as small as possible. Peoplwe were especially sensitive to tax, which they felt did nothing to contribute to their lives because the money just went back to England.

That and the fact that any poor european farmer could cross the atlantic ocean and get a piece of land where he would be able to make his own fortune without more state intervention than general property rights.