“I just got so excited because I thought ‘Wow…I can really be part of history by doing this.'”

On Tuesday, millions of Americans will head to the polls to vote in the all-important New York presidential primary.

Campaigning isn’t just happening in the States. Bernie Sanders fans Mark Anthony Dodson and Mathis Dührsen have set up a phonebank right here in Sydney.

Backchat talked to them, and volunteer Philippa Clark, to see why Bernie is resonating with Australians.

According to Dr Thomas Adams from the US Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, Sanders is well placed to appeal to the Australian left-wing political scene:

In Australia, I think the same kind of things resonate. This is a country that looks a lot like the United States did in the 1980s, in terms of the attacks on the social state, higher education and various schemes to privatise medicare.

There’s a growing feeling especially among younger Australians that they’re not going to have the kind of lives that their parents did.

Check out the campaign on the Australians Supporting Bernie Sanders Facebook page.

Oscar Coleman reports.

Photo credit: Australians Supporting Bernie Sanders