American expat votes in Canada could ‘change everything’: election expert

By Christl Dabu

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    TORONTO (CTV Network) — Steve Winters, who has dual American-Canadian citizenship, has voted in four U.S. presidential elections since he moved to Canada 17 years ago. As the Nov. 5 race is widely predicted to be a close one, he’s eager to cast his absentee ballot.

He says he has voted for various parties, from Democrats to Republicans and even independent candidate Ross Perot back in 1992.

Winters, who considers himself politically independent, doesn’t think his vote will make a big difference in the Electoral College because he last lived in Illinois, which tends to vote for Democrats. In the United States, the president and vice-president are chosen through the Electoral College process rather than the popular vote, with battleground states playing crucial roles.

American expats 18 years and older can register to get an absentee ballot for U.S. primary and presidential elections, and certain states also allow overseas voting for state and local races, according to the U.S. government. Americans can register based on their state of voting residence, or the last state they lived in.

Though he’s not casting his ballot from a battleground state, Winters says it’s important to vote, even if it’s just “the spirit of the thing.”

The Minnesota native moved to Canada from Illinois after he landed a job as a linguistics professor at the University of Calgary.

“I think democracy is a great thing and the more people get represented in the system, the better,” Winters, 50, said in a video interview with CTVNews.ca last week, adding that he doesn’t understand people who treat voting as a “chore.”

“This is the way to really register your opinion so that somebody hears it,” he said.

With a tight election race and a polarized public, some believe American voters in Canada and overseas could be crucial in helping elect the new president next month.

More than 605,000 Americans living in Canada are eligible to vote, but the actual number is believed to be much higher, said Erin Kotecki Vest, the chair of Democrats Abroad Canada in Montreal, in a video interview with CTVNews.ca last week.

Democrats Abroad is the Democratic Party’s official arm for American voters living outside the United States. Kotecki Vest said the latest figure from the federal government that she cited doesn’t count factors such as children who are over 18 years old and university students.

Globally, an estimated 2.8 million American expats from almost 200 countries were eligible to vote in 2022, according to the U.S. government.

Kotecki Vest estimates the figure to be higher, from six million to nine million American overseas voters, including workers, students and military families.

“So we estimate that there are anywhere from that 600,000 number up to a million voters here in Canada that could absolutely change everything in the election in the U.S.,” Kotecki Vest said.

American expats in Canada mostly lean Democratic, said Georganne Burke, the Ottawa-based Canadian chapter leader of Republicans Overseas, but it’s hard to get concrete numbers because the U.S. doesn’t have a federal system for voter registration.

Republicans Overseas is a political organization for Americans living outside the U.S., and a group that’s recognized by the Republican National committee. It says on its website that it provides a way for expats to engage in the U.S. democratic political process, including providing expats with information on how to vote outside the United States.

From her experience, living in Canada as a voter for 37 years, Burke estimates that the ratio is at least 3:1 for Democratic registered voters versus Republican ones in Canada. She says her private Facebook group for overseas Republicans has more than 10,000 members. The Canadian-American citizen said she believes some countries have even larger numbers of Republican voters than Democratic ones, though she believes many don’t vote.

Those who tend to vote are expats who move overseas for school or for a job and only stay in their host countries for several years so they maintain a strong connection to the U.S., Burke says.

Will overseas votes matter? The largest portion of American overseas voters is in Canada, said Eric Ham, CTV News’ political analyst based in Washington, D.C., and a former congressional staffer in the U.S. Congress.

“The overseas vote has never necessarily swayed an election one way or the other,” he said.

Still, he said Americans overseas from battleground states could make a difference in the race, especially those from Pennsylvania.

He thinks every vote will matter in this year’s race. He said data suggests the Nov. 5 election may become the closest race in history.

With close polling numbers for Republican candidate Donald Trump and Democratic candidate Kamala Harris, Kotecki Vest believes overseas voters will make a difference.

“It’s incredibly important that everyone remembers that their vote actually does matter,” Kotecki Vest said. “This is going to be a tight election. We are predicting a razor thin margin … we know that those swing states are going to count for even more.”

Voting will matter even if residents aren’t living in their country, she said.

“It’s important that we exercise that right from wherever we may be living because we know it’s going to affect us in one way or another,” she said, noting voters also have a stake in the future of friends and family at home. “America tends to affect the rest of the world and there’s sort of nothing we can do about it.”

Democrats Abroad said it played a “pivotal role,” with votes making a difference in the U.S. midterm elections in Arizona and Georgia, as well as three swing states during the 2020 presidential election.

The group said Americans abroad overwhelmingly voted for the Democrats. It cited data from VoteFromAbroad.org that found 77.65 per cent of voters using the group’s nonpartisan voter support tool registered as left leaning, from 2020 to April 2024.

Burke of Republicans Overseas says every vote matters even if the person isn’t from a battleground state.

“It doesn’t matter if it’s a swing state or not, it matters that they vote,” Burke said in a video interview with CTVNews.ca last week. “That is their, first of all, their duty and their privilege and their right to vote. And they should take it seriously. Every vote matters, every vote counts.”

As an example, she said if more people don’t vote in a non-swing state that was favouring one party because they thought it wouldn’t matter, the dynamics could change and the favoured party could lose its edge.

The overseas voters’ potential impact has captured Trump’s attention.

“It seems former president Trump has caught on to what kind of difference we could make as he posted on Truth Social (social media platform) telling lies as usual about the overseas vote and how he believed the Democrats are going to cheat, which is completely untrue,” Kotecki Vest said.

As for Trump’s claims on social media about overseas voters, Burke said Harris is no better and calling each side liars isn’t useful. As well, she said states have stringent rules for registering to get absentee ballots. “Donald Trump is no more of a liar than any other politician,” she said. “All politicians stretch the truth. … The fact is that both parties have completely different worldviews. They have different solutions to the problems. Let’s focus on that rather than calling each other liars and other things.”

The importance of overseas voters isn’t lost on Jodie Turner, who has been in Canada since 2004. The physician will be voting in her fifth U.S. presidential election, even though she thinks her vote won’t be a deciding factor in the race. She said she registered to vote in Texas, where she last lived before moving to Vancouver Island. Texas isn’t considered one of the battleground states, and hasn’t registered an electoral college win for the Democrats since 1976 when Jimmy Carter became president.

Because of the U.S. Electoral College System, she says she feels her vote “has effectively been erased.”

“Still, as a taxpaying U.S. citizen, with many family members living south of the border, I take the time to vote,” she said in an email to CTVNews.ca. “It might rightly be considered a waste of time, but I think it is important to participate in the democratic process nonetheless.”

What is voter interest like in Canada?

Kotecki Vest says she thinks voter interest in this election is “incredibly high,” based on the spike in new group members and engagement on the VotefromAbroad.org website.

“We’re looking at numbers that we haven’t seen since Barack Obama ran in 2008,” Kotecki Vest said, adding that Democrats Abroad Canada is working hard to ensure everyone gets their ballot on time.

“People are excited,” she said. “My inbox is overwhelmed, my phone is overwhelmed.”

U.S. election 2024 predictions

Kotecki Vest said she expects the Democrats to win, based on federal government figures that show how Americans abroad have voted in the past. About 80 per cent of the voters living in Canada and overseas vote Democrat, she said, based on data from the federal government and from past elections.

“We’re considered a state party within the DNC (Democratic National Committee),” she said of Democrats Abroad. “ We have delegates that we take to the convention and that we vote with. The Republican Party does not have an equal like that and that’s because they don’t really have the votes here.”

Democrats Abroad’s view that Harris will have substantial support from overseas voters makes sense to Ham.

“Because typically, if you look at the demographic of people who are living overseas and who are voting, we’re talking about people who are educated, people who are politically savvy and sophisticated,” Ham said, noting that data shows college-educated voters lean Democratic.

Meanwhile, Trump is mainly targeting voters who are white, rural and have little education, he said.

“In fact, if you look at the data right now, Donald Trump is doing much better in rural America. He’s doing much better with people without a college degree,” Ham said.

Some Republican members of Congress have boasted about never having a passport and never leaving the U.S., he added.

Burke says she disagrees with that characterization of Republican voters.

“I think that’s a false thing and I know I can’t tell you how many people I know that are supporting the Republicans that are well educated, thoughtful people,” said Burke, who says she has a master’s degree and has worked in executive positions for most of her career. Burke is currently vice-president of a government relations firm. “This is spin that is put out there by the Democrats to make us make the voters think that if you’re a Republican, you must be stupid because obviously you’d be Democrat otherwise. … that’s utter nonsense.”

“There are smart people and dumb people, educated people and uneducated people, good people and bad people in every party,” she added.

What’s driving interest for voters?

Harris is the “driving factor” that’s boosting interest among Democratic voters, Kotecki Vest said.

“She aligns with the values of a lot of Americans living in Canada,” she said. “She’s talking so much about getting rid of this division and this hate and all of this ridiculousness, frankly, that’s been going on in American politics. We’re all exhausted from it.”

Kotecki Vest said she’s confident Americans will turn out to vote for Harris and Democrats Abroad members are even planning to knock on doors in Windsor, where she says many people from the swing state of Michigan live.

“We’re doing things that we’ve never done before because of the excitement and because we know that these voters cannot wait to cast their ballot for Vice-President Harris,” she said.

In contrast, she said many Michiganders living in the Windsor area didn’t vote in the 2016 presidential election, which Donald Trump won.

Republican nominee Donald Trump, left, and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris are shown in this combination of photos during a presidential debate in Philadelphia on Sept. 10, 2024. (Alex Brandon / AP Photo)

Different perspective in Canada

Some American expats acquire a different perspective living in Canada compared to living in the United States.

Winters said moving to Canada in 2007 helped expand his perspective on world affairs.

“I think when I was living in the U.S., my mind was more U.S.-centred,” Winters said. “While the U.S. is important, it’s not the whole world.”

Regardless of their party, Burke says expats are more concerned about foreign affairs since they’re living in a foreign country. Burke herself changed her views from being a “hardcore, left-wing Democrat” to a Republican and Trump supporter, though she considers herself independent. She moved with her husband and six children to Canada in 1987 from Buffalo, N.Y., because she wanted her children to attend a high school for observant Jews in Toronto.

Kotecki Vest, a Detroit native and lifelong Democrat, says she has grown to appreciate Americans’ relationship with Canadians and better understands the influence of the U.S. while living in her host country of Canada.

Kotecki Vest has lived in Canada with her husband and two sons for about five years. She said her entire family, for the first time, will vote in a presidential election.

“So we’re voting not only for ourselves, but we’re voting for our families, our friends and everyone back home and everything that will still affect us while we live overseas,” she said.

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