ELECTION fever will grip many islanders today. Some might even stay up late into the evening to learn who is the victor on this momentous occasion.

Which one of Hugo, Le Page, Sebire or Tanner will miss out in Sampson’s? It’s even tighter in St Peter Port, where six candidates battle it out for five seats on the douzaine.

And will both the two Lenfesteys get in at the expense of either a De Garis, De Lisle or a De Garis Parker in St Peter’s? It’s just too close to call at this stage. The decision rests on the shoulders of tens of voters.

The irony can be lost on no one that, worthy occasion though the parish elections are – and full credit to the candidates for their sense of public duty – it is an election thousands of miles away that will have the greater impact on our lives, not one happening on our doorsteps.

After years of campaigning, the US election finally comes to its conclusion tonight with Barack Obama and John McCain locked in battle for the hearts, minds and prejudices of the American people.

Those who doubt the importance of this to the rest of world have not been paying attention. When the US goes to war, Britain follows. When a regime troubles the US, the world looks on in anticipation of another destabilised country and starts assembling a peacekeeping force.

And it’s not just in its foreign policy that the world takes its lead from the Western superpower. When America’s sub-prime housing market caught a cold and its economy full-scale pneumonia, the leaders of the rest of the industrialised world were helpless as their own financial systems came perilously close to failure.

By 8am tomorrow morning, hanging chads aside, the world should have a good idea who has won.

Both candidates promise change. Those on this side of the Atlantic who have tired of a world at war which is unable to acknowledge climate change, let alone tackle it, will welcome that.

What the new president means by change, and how he intends to implement it, will be of supreme importance to every one of us.