In Australia, crowds watched the results roll in while drinking beer in an American bar in Sydney.
"The news is so much better when Trump is in," said Glen Roberts, wearing a red 'Make Europe Great Again' baseball cap. "You never know what he said, it's so good. I think it'll be less interesting if Trump loses."
Others were quick to underline the ramifications of the U.S. vote worldwide. "I think it affects us all, what happens over there really matters for the next four years over here," said Sydney resident Luke Heinrich.
New York-based Human Rights Watch, one of the world's leading civil rights groups, warned about the need to reserve judgment on the results until every vote is counted. With a very high number of mail-in ballots this year because of the Covid-19 pandemic, full tallies are expected to take days in some states.
Executive director Kenneth Roth said premature declarations of victory were dangerous.
"Autocrats might be perfectly happy to undermine democracy in the United States by welcoming a premature declaration of victory," he said.
China, whose relations with the United States have sunk to their worst in decades under Trump, said the election was a domestic affair and it had "no position on it".
Chinese social media users, however, were quick to mock the failure of the U.S. electoral system to deliver a quick and clear result.
"Whether he wins or loses, his final mission is to destroy the appearance of American democracy," one user on China's Twitter-like Weibo platform wrote on Wednesday.
"Let Trump be re-elected and take the U.S. downhill," another wrote.
In Nigeria, one leading politician, Senator Shehu Sani, said the uncertainty in the United States was reminiscent of Africa.
"Africa used to learn American democracy, America is now learning African democracy," he tweeted to his 1.6 million followers.
