Foreign Correspondent: US Election

America is at the heart of international news this week, with the Presidential Election just days away.

ABC’s Annabel Crabb heads to the States for Foreign Correspondent and meets some colourful voters.

Only in America?

As Americans prepare to cast their votes in the 2012 Presidential election, special correspondent Annabel Crabb heads to Florida to see what the ultimate swing state can tell us about definitive and decisive campaign issues and the political fortunes of Barack Obama and Mitt Romney.

Home of the infamous hanging chad in the Bush v Gore 2000 election and host to this campaign’s Republican Party Convention, Florida is split square down the middle. Just who occupies the White House for the next four years may depend on a handful of waverers.

Annabel Crabb – one of Australia’s best known and most astute political observers – takes a breather from the shenanigans of Canberra’s hung parliament – lobs in Tampa, packs herself into Jasmine the pea-green Kombi and hits the highway to gather perspective on the on the Obama/Romney showdown.

Gator hunter Phil Walters tells her President Obama is a ‘tyrant’ who ‘doesn’t love his country’ and plans to redistribute individual wealth. Democrat power couple Scott and Susannah Randolph nurse baby Hillary Eleanor and insist the President needs another four years to ‘undo the damage’ of George W. Bush’s presidency.

On a bright, breezy, irreverent and ultimately fascinating jaunt through Florida’s swamps and cities, Annabel tackles the immigration issue with former state governor and Presidential little brother Jeb Bush, learns to shovel oysters with Gulf farmers decrying the advent of Obama socialism, probes campaign financing with another former governor Bob Graham, pays her very first visit to a gun store and marvels at mermaids, manatee and the distinctive complexities of the Sunshine State

And there’s plenty of down-home know-how about which candidate may win. For Political lobbyist Mac Stipanovic it’s all about who is best at reaching Florida’s disaffected and undecided.

“I think the highly sophisticated, philosophical phrase is you’ve got to put the corn down where the goats can get it!”

Tuesday November 6 at 8PM.