Scoping in Python 'for' loops

The likeliest answer is that it just keeps the grammar simple, hasn't been a stumbling block for adoption, and many have been happy with not having to disambiguate the scope to which a name belongs when assigning to it within a loop construct. Variables are not declared within a scope, it is implied by the location of assignment statements. The global keyword exists just for this reason (to signify that assignment is done at a global scope).

Update

Here's a good discussion on the topic: http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-ideas/2008-October/002109.html

Previous proposals to make for-loop variables local to the loop have stumbled on the problem of existing code that relies on the loop variable keeping its value after exiting the loop, and it seems that this is regarded as a desirable feature.

In short, you can probably blame it on the Python community :P

Python does not have blocks, as do some other languages (such as C/C++ or Java). Therefore, scoping unit in Python is a function.