“The triumph of the progressive women,” “Good for Democrats, bad for Asia,” and “Historic firsts in US midterm elections.”
Readers abroad woke up to these headlines about the U.S. 2018 midterm elections today, which saw absolute turnout 37% higher than the 2014 midterms. Many news outlets opted to visualize the results for readers in infographic form.
China Daily focused on voter dissatisfaction and the Democrats’ newly-won ability to investigate the administration. Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post quoted Eurasia Group president Ian Bremmer, who said that a besieged U.S. president “is likely to act more erratically, more aggressively and potentially more dangerous for your part of the world.”
Germany’s highest-circulation newspaper, the Süddeutsche Zeitung, led with a list of the precedent-setting arrivals in the House of Representatives: the Somali Muslim, the lesbian Native American, and a leftist Puerto Rican.
Canada offered up a rebuke: “If the midterms were a test of the country’s character, Americans failed,” writes American journalist Sarah Kendzior in her column in Canada’s Globe and Mail.
Mexico’s Reforma topped its homepage with midterm coverage, followed by updates on a caravan of Central American refugees taking a pause in Mexico City on their long journey to apply for asylum in the U.S.
Favorite photos included those of the many new women elected to Congress. This year’s class of women, 112 across both houses, is a record. The previous high was 107 women.
Much of the foreign media also focused on how the voting showed a political split within the US – described as “divisa in due” (divided in two) by Italy’s Corriere della Sera. Germany’s Welt added that the election was one “without a winner.”
Russia’s Kommersant went further, claiming the midterms revealed an “unprecedented split in society”.