Candidates (and celebrities) are courting Americans overseas for their vote, which could have a major impact on the race between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris.
We talked to voters in key swing states that could decide the election
Reporters around the USA TODAY Network talk to voters in seven key swing states that could decide the 2024 presidential election.
LONDON – In mid-October, Greg Swenson, an American who has lived in London for the last decade, was doing what he described as “the banking circuit”: Milan, Paris, Abu Dhabi.
“It’s been crazy. Six cities in two weeks,” Swenson said in a phone interview from an airport. He was on his way to Dublin. He had recently returned from the Middle East. The week after, Swenson, an investment banker who chairs the U.K. chapter of Republicans Overseas, an organization that is recognized by but not formally affiliated with the Republican National Committee, was on the road yet again.
“We’ve never been aggressive about getting out the vote,” Swenson said of his organization.
“I don’t really feel like jumping out of bed every day trying to register as many people as I can who are probably going to vote Democrat anyway. You want to focus your get out the vote on areas that are going to vote Republican.”
Americans overseas: Where are they? Who are they?
This year, though, may be different, with a stronger effort to drum up votes from Americans living abroad.
Overseas voters have rarely commanded the full attention of presidential campaigns. But with the U.S. presidential election nail-bitingly close, campaigns for both Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump have been looking for votes under every rock they can find. This year, that means overseas, too.
There is not a precise count of how many Americans live overseas. Estimates from the U.S. Federal Voting Assistance Program (FVAP), Association of Americans Resident Overseas and outside experts put it as low as 4.4 million and as high as 9 million. According to the FVAP’s 2020 report to Congress, only 7.8% of them voted in the 2020 presidential election, compared with an overall turnout rate of 67%.
A relatively low turnout rate by overseas voters may help explain why some in that voting bloc have felt sidelined in terms of attention from campaigns in past elections. Other reasons include their geographical distance, poor data on where these Americans are, who they are politically, and difficulties in figuring out how to vote. For Republicans like Swenson, there is a sense that looking for votes overseas is not very useful, since the overseas voting bloc is thought of as favoring Democrats. That is a shift that took place about a decade ago when civilians voting from abroad started outnumbering traditionally Republican-supporting military voters, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.
There may be evidence that in this election cycle, both campaigns have been more actively courting potential American voters who live in far-flung places from Australia to Guatemala.
For Swenson, in addition to flying around Europe and the Middle East to speak to prospective Republican voters, his organization has increased its social media presence by purchasing Facebook ads for the first time. It has hosted more in-person events than it has in prior election years, including outside NFL games in London.
In June, Trump’s son, Donald Jr., was among the guests at a glitzy Republican fundraiser in London hosted by an Australian actress and her wealthy British property developer husband. The price of a ticket ranged from $10,000-$100,000. Swenson said the event raised at least $2.5 million. While that may not sound like a lot compared to the millions that get raised in the U.S. at similar events, it represented a milestone for Republicans Overseas.
“That changed the relationship,” Swenson, 62, said of the London fundraiser. “Prior to that, my group had no contact with the campaign. We had all been doing this just because we’re civic-minded.”
When Karen M., 54, a likely Democratic voter from Florida and longtime London resident, recently passed by a house in London’s South Kensington neighborhood that was bedecked in Harris signs in every window, she was “very surprised.”
Karen, who asked that her last name be withheld for privacy reasons, thought: Who were these signs in central London meant for when English people aren’t even the ones voting in November?
Battleground states, ‘gorilla PR’
The Democratic National Committee estimates that 1.6 million overseas voters are eligible to cast ballots in one of seven battleground states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
These are the states that will almost certainly determine the outcome of the presidential race on Nov. 5. Given that in the 2020 presidential election, President Joe Biden won Nevada by fewer than 11,000 votes and carried Georgia by fewer than 12,000, Democrats have also appeared to spy an extra opportunity with voters overseas.
Sharon Manitta, a retired conservator of historic textiles from Auburn, New York, who lives in Wiltshire, England, and is the global press secretary for Democrats Abroad, the official overseas arm of the Democratic National Committee, said that the DNC gave $300,000 for voter outreach and education around the world. That appears to be its record amount for an election cycle. A group of former ambassadors raised at least another $100,000, she said, all of which has gone toward phone banking and voter registration efforts.
“We are doing anything we can think of to make sure Americans are registered and vote,” Manitta said. “Sometimes this involves what I have christened ‘gorilla PR.’ If I’m in a grocery store and I hear a North American accent I’ll drop a little votefromabroad.org business card in their shopping trolley.”
In the U.K., Democrats Abroad has also shown up at farmers’ markets. It opened a pop-up campaign office decorated with U.S. flags at the London School of Economics in central London. There, volunteers hit the phones to call as many Americans living overseas as they can. In mid-October, former U.S. House of Representative Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and her daughter Christine, a Democratic Party political strategist, even stopped by.
Manitta, who is 76, said this year marks her 16th presidential cycle and she can’t recall another example of a Democratic Party “celebrity” of Pelosi’s stature making an appearance at a Democrats Abroad office.
In June, Anna Wintour, the British-American editor of Vogue magazine held a rival fundraising event in London for Democrats around the same time as the Republican Overseas one, though few details were made public.
“It’s been growing over the years,” said Manitta, referring to what she sees as the increased attention paid to overseas voters by presidential campaigns.
What to know if you’re an overseas voter:
◾ Abroad and don’t have a voting plan? Go to your state’s electoral website or reach out to your political party’s local office overseas to know your options and reach out for last-minute advice.
◾ Tip: Get a tracking code for your absentee ballot to ensure your vote arrives in time (every state’s timeline is different, but many give a grace period to military and overseas absentee ballots post-Election Day).
◾ Worried about your vote being counted? Once it’s arrived, check your vote’s status on your state or area’s elections website to know your ballot was accounted for.
Absentee but not absent
Americans have been casting absentee ballots since the Civil War so that the men who were away fighting could vote. The process became more formalized after World War II because a lot of American soldiers began spending long periods away from home on overseas U.S. military bases. This helps explain why FVAP, which provides the infrastructure for overseas voters, is still administered by the U.S. Department of Defense.
Today, Americans move overseas for various reasons: family, employment, and quality of life. Relatively little is known about the U.S. population overseas who are eligible to vote, though surveys show they tend to be college-educated, and just under half hold citizenship of the U.S. and another country.
According to FVAP estimates, the largest blocs of American overseas voters live in Canada and Mexico, followed by Britain, France and Israel.
Still, for some Americans who live overseas, time zone differences make it difficult to keep up with the election. That’s been the case for Regan Moran, 26, who is about to graduate with a nursing degree.
Moran is a Franklin County, Ohio, voter living in Sydney, 16 hours ahead of her home time zone. Catching debates and speeches wasn’t possible this election, so Moran has relied on her social media feeds for clips and updates to make her decision.
“I feel like I’ve been getting a lot of filtered news without getting to see the actual experience with my own eyes,” she said. As a resident abroad since February 2023, this is her first time voting overseas.
Surveys show that one of the reasons Americans who live overseas don’t vote as much as people in the U.S. do is because they find the paperwork too complicated. Different states have different rules, but ballots must typically be returned to the state where a voter last lived. Federal law requires local election officials to mail absentee ballots 45 days before an election. These mailed ballots can face delays because of administrative hurdles and irregular or poor mail service. Not all states allow overseas voters to cast a ballot by email.
Moran opted for an email ballot she could print out, fill in and mail it to her election officials because it felt trustworthy and safe, she said, calling the process “easy.”
Targeted by the Trump campaign with legal challenges
This year, the Trump campaign has targeted overseas voting in legal challenges, seeking to disqualify ballots of certain voters from abroad, such as some Americans who were born overseas to U.S. parents and the spouses of military voters. It has also made general claims, without providing evidence or specific examples, of fraud and wrongdoing. The Trump campaign has accused Britain’s ruling Labour Party of “blatant election interference.”
Aine Dougherty, 27, a Pennsylvania voter living in Mulhouse, France, said she can tell both campaigns know the importance of overseas voters this election cycle based on the flood of ads targeting voters abroad on her social media in recent months.
“I’m happy with the fact that there’s options for me to make my voice heard from a different country,” she said. Dougherty, a pastry student, compares her French city’s working-class heritage to her home state of Pennsylvania. Her hometown of Bala Cynwyd is located in Montgomery County, a key swing state territory both Harris and Trump have courted in recent weeks.
Reproductive rights motivating overseas voters
The issue of reproductive rights is motivating some Americans overseas to vote in this year’s election. As a health care worker who is living with an autoimmune disorder, Moran, the Ohioan living in Sydney, is motivated by the demise of Roe v. Wade. She wants to pursue a career in emergency medicine and grapples with the potential of practicing nursing in any state that wouldn’t protect her own and other women’s bodies.
“I don’t think I would have an easy time,” she said of moving back to a place that does not protect women’s health. The daily life of an ER nurse would be constantly confronted with this reality, she said: “I know I would risk my license. I would risk a lot emotionally. I would risk my own health.”
While Harris has campaigned on a promise to restore the protections guaranteed by Roe, JD Vance, Trump’s pick for vice president, argued in the vice presidential debate in early October that he and Trump are promoting pro-family policies, such as fertility treatments. He also defended Trump’s position that abortion regulation should be left up to the states.
“The outcome of this election will seriously change my views on what states I feel I would feel comfortable moving back to,” Moran said.
Dougherty, from Pennsylvania, voted overseas in the 2020 election but said she feels more invested in 2024 because she wants to protect women’s rights in her home state and across the country.
“The people I love are still in America, maybe I’ll go back someday,” Dougherty said. “I think it’s important the country goes in the direction I would want, and I’m doing what I can to make that happen.”
Is an end to double taxes possible?
Americans residing outside the U.S. must file tax returns with the IRS, which in some cases can result in them paying taxes in both the U.S. and their country of residence, depending on whether there’s a double tax agreement or not, and how much they earn.
As part of his pitch to Americans overseas, Trump has vowed to end “double taxation.” However, there is a threshold of $120,000, meaning that while everyone must file U.S. taxes regardless of what they earn, only those who earn more than this amount may have to pay additional tax on their income above that level.
This is nevertheless a policy proposal that has resonated with U.S. overseas voters and political organizers like Joe Beydoun, who chairs Republicans Overseas in the United Arab Emirates.
“We’re Americans, but we’re paying more taxes than anybody else,” Beydoun, who is based in Dubai, said. “We’re not even competitive in our field.”
In 2024, the top personal income tax rate was in Denmark, at 55.9%, according to the Tax Foundation, a Europe-based organization that researches tax policies. The combined U.S. federal and state average rate was 42.1%. There is no personal income tax in the UAE.
Beydoun, who is a former deputy mayor of Dearborn, Michigan, one of America’s largest Arab American populations, said he believes Trump will bring “peace” amid the Biden administration’s support of Israel’s ongoing offensive to root out Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
He said he knows through conversations with friends and family overseas and back home that many people from Michigan with ties to the Middle East feel the same, and could make a big difference come Election Day: “You need to continue to count the Arab American vote as serious voters.”
Beydoun added that while past U.S. election cycles in his region were largely defined by high Democratic organizing, he’s noticed more energy and engagement from local Republicans asking how to vote from overseas.
“We used to have to call people and have them register … this time they are calling us,” he said.
‘What we do every election cycle’
Still, even as this year’s vote looks very tight, Martha McDevitt-Pugh, the Netherlands-based American chair of Democrats Abroad, said overseas voters have always been important to U.S. elections and that this year is no different.
“We’ve been engaged all year, making sure that people know they can vote, how to do it and that their votes can make a difference,” she said.
“We’re doing that like we do it in every cycle.”
John Fortier, a political scientist at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative-leaning Washington think tank, also expressed skepticism over the ultimate impact of the overseas vote.
“It’s just really hard to gauge because it’s not one thing, right?” he said, noting that voters abroad are made up of itinerant students, digital nomads, Americans who can be on short-term business contracts. He said many military personnel overseas “shift in and out of the U.S.” and have additional options in terms of where they vote − where they happened to be stationed back in the U.S., where their families may have addresses, or where they last lived.
“It’s really hard to calculate because we don’t know how many people are eligible.”
John Chudy, an American who worked in international development before retiring in Guatemala, where he now is the chair for the local chapter of Democrats Abroad, said about 40,000 Americans are living in his country. Americans in Guatemala are attuned to the fact that their country often features in the U.S. political debates in the context of immigration. Chudy said that in Guatemala, there are about 600 registered Democrats who he expects to vote. He’s not sure about the rest.
“I know some Republicans here,” Chudy, 77, said. “But generally speaking Republicans don’t come to Guatemala to retire, though the climate is terrific and it’s a lot easier to live on Social Security. So they’re pretty much on their own.”
On Election Day, Beydoun plans to gather in Dubai at 6 a.m. with Democrats, Republicans and other Americans to watch the results. They’ll eat breakfast as the count comes in during what is still nighttime in America. They’ll guess who they think the winner will be: “I’m not sure if we will be surprised or not.”
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Publish date : 2024-10-30 06:14:00
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