No outside observers for the midterms: Simon Marks calls it a first in 20 years
Back on James O'Brien's show, the Washington-based journalist explains why American voters will go to the polls without international monitors watching, and the comment section filled up fast.
LBC
Story of Why this story? The video opened at a pace of 927,568 views a day, 23 times a normal first day on this channel (39,786).
The first time this has happened in 20 years... | Simon Marks
Simon Marks has been a regular voice on James O'Brien's show in recent days, and this time the subject is who gets to watch America vote.
The clip starts from a single decision. The Trump administration has declined to invite external election observers to the midterms. The description says this will be the first time in more than two decades that a regional security group is not present at a US election. That description fits the OSCE, whose election office has sent teams to American votes since the early 2000s. Marks, a British journalist who has reported from Washington for many years, walks O'Brien through what that absence could mean less than four weeks before the November 3 vote.
The clip passed 720,000 views in its first 15 hours. A regular LBC clip usually finishes its whole first day far below that. The comments came in about seven times faster than usual. Most of them ask the same thing: whether the result will be accepted once the votes are counted. Voting machines come up often, and so does January 6. Many British viewers turn the question toward home and wonder whether it could happen in the UK.
The same conversation also went up in a shorter cut, "Is Trump preparing to rig the midterm elections?", which has stayed small. O'Brien's full show from that day returns to the midterms near its end. Across the whole channel, LBC is having a much busier day than usual. TalkTV is running close to its normal pace, and Times Radio is quieter than its own. For LBC, the person drawing the crowd is the Washington correspondent who keeps getting called back.
Published on Trari
Read next
Is this your channel?
Share the story with your audience: in a community post, in your channel's description or on your socials. The text and the badge are ready.
You may use the picture, the badge, and link it to this story.
- Channel
- LBC
- Subscribers
- 1,530,000
- Channel views, last 7 days
- 13,750,968
- Channel views, pace per day
- 2,674,337 (on a normal day: 1,673,644)
- Video published
- October 7, 2026
- Video views so far
- 723,733 (less than a day online)
- Video views, pace per day
- 927,568
The numbers
The figures show a clip running far ahead of a usual LBC first day, with a comment section to match.
💡 Test your knowledge
The OSCE grew out of a Cold War conference whose founding document, the Final Act, was signed in 1975 in which city?
The Helsinki Final Act of 1975 came out of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe, which later became the OSCE.
