Whether fans of the left wing, right wing, or just the West Wing, more than 150 people flocked to the University of Sydney's Manning Bar to watch the Super Tuesday results live on a giant screen and mingle with fellow political pundits. Geoff Gray, executive director of the American Australian Association, and Harry Melkonian, US Studies Centre lecturer on the US Constitution, offered their analyses of the results.
The event attracted a diverse array of students, academics, retirees, and professionals from the business, government and media communities.
Results from the simulated voting centre revealed the following about the election watch guests:
When asked which they thought was better for Australia, election watch guests responded as follows:
The delegate draw tested participants' political astuteness by asking them to guess how many delegates Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John McCain each would win on Super Tuesday. Congratulations to first place winner Tim Andrews who came within 68 delegates of the total gained by the three candidates. Tim is a University of Sydney alumnus who holds a Bachelor of Economics and a Master of Public Policy. Tim indicated he wished the US Studies postgraduate program would have been offered at the time of his studies. Rounding out the top three delegate draw winners were University of Sydney staff members Lucinda Crossley and Emily Reid who came within 100 delegates of the correct total.