When America elects a president, the whole world watches – not just for the spectacle and the drama, but because such is the United States’s global influence that billions of people without a vote stand to be affected by the outcome.

From the blasted tree lines of eastern Ukraine to the ruins of Gaza and the typhoon-blown waves of the Taiwan Strait; in the crowded buses running down Tehran’s Ali Vasr Avenue, the high rises of Beijing and the overheated, parquet-floored rooms of the presidential administration in Moscow, the same question is being asked: Who will win on Tuesday night?

Ukraine

Nowhere are the stakes higher than for Ukraine where everyone understands that the country’s survival is dependent on the US.

Soldiers in the east do not rely solely on American weapons, vehicles, ammunition.

But Ukraine’s British, European, and other allies are in no position to provide “anything like” the same level of support if the US contribution were to shrink or vanish, said Ed Arnold of the Royal United Services Institute.

The outcome of the election is thus literally an existential question.

But the candidates have been so vague about their plans, there’s little consensus about who would be better – or least bad.

“They are like four competing opinions and I can’t tell which is most popular,” Andriy Zagorodnyuk, a former defence minister, said from Kyiv.

“With Harris, the most pessimistic view, which is quite widespread, is that if she wins she will just more or less continue Biden’s policy – and we’ll be a long, long time in this war.

“Of course, some people say ‘no, no it will be different’. Some optimists think it will be much more effective and end the war.”