In Europe, Obama Dominates Intense Coverage of U.S. Election

Coverage is also complicated by the fact that political identifiers such as left and right, or Democrat and Republican, don't always mean the same thing to Europeans as they do in the United States.

For instance, after Obama declared back in June that he supported the death penalty for child rapists, French television TF1 correspondents felt compelled to do an in-depth explanatory piece about the candidate's policy positions.

"For the French, it's difficult to see that a Democratic candidate supports that position, because definitions of right and left are very different in France," Grange said.

"The angle on our stories depends on candidates: from immigration to the Iraq war, international issues or health care, even if Germany is not that interested," said Klaus-Peter Siegloch, correspondent for ZDF German Television. "But we cannot go so deep into U.S. policies because it's hard for Germans, for example, to understand the American healthcare system. We have to cover the candidates' personalities, talking about their plans and without going too much into detail."

According to a Gallup poll released on July 23, 80 percent of the British, 71 percent of the French and 62 percent of the Germans think that the outcome of the presidential election will impact their own country.

The BBC's Iccard cites two major issues the British audiences are following: "First, they are concerned about the Iraq war. British troops are still deployed in the country and a decision [by the U.S.] to withdraw would affect them too. Second, the British economy is tightly linked to the American and also struggling because of the economic problems here."

The stressed U.S. economy and its influence in Europe is also a concern to Spanish citizens. Some even believe that a victory by Obama would not only improve the U.S. economy but also the Spanish one.

"There's some excitement for things to change in Spain if Obama becomes president. There's this feeling that things can change here and it can affect Spain," de Vega said.

For the French, their media coverage and interest in Obama have both social and historical components. For French minorities, especially after the tensions with the government and the riots in some neighborhoods where some immigrants live, Barack Obama's message of change appeals to them too.

"It's already done. The fact that he could win it's already a message of hope," TF1's Pierre Grange said.

This means a major transformation for the French population, particularly in those neighborhoods, where anti-Americanism had been growing in the last few years. As François Durpaire and Jean-Claude Tchicaya explained last March in the French newspaper Libération, going "from Bush to Obama would constitute a complete change of image for America, to the point of renewing the famous 'American dream.'"

"There's a difficult relation between Americans and French. Americans think that we don't like them, but we live the American dream," Grange explained. "We love the American dream, but we hate imperialism. With Obama, we would have the America we love, but with Bush it's difficult to say that we love America."