SALON

Tuesday, Oct 9, 2012 4:28 PM UTC

Are expats America’s laziest voters?

Even in an era of emailed ballots, corralling far-flung members of the electorate often proves troublesome

By

Topics: 2012 Elections, Republicans, Democrats, GlobalPost, Thailand, Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, Expats,

Are expats America's laziest voters? (Credit: AP/Toby Talbot)
This article originally appeared on GlobalPost.

Global Post BANGKOK, Thailand — There is no variety of American voter quite so unreliable as expatriates. They vote far less frequently than even teenagers and high-school dropouts. When it comes to campaign contributions, they donate less than 1 percent of the total haul.

Compounding their low turnout rate — a scant 7 percent in the 2008 U.S. presidential race, according to the non-partisan Overseas Vote Foundation — is the mystery surrounding their voting habits. Do most Americans living abroad skew towards Democrats or Republicans? No one knows for sure. In U.S. politics, a field dissected at the molecular level by highly paid strategists, the data is conspicuously absent.

“Across all expatriates, how many get the ballot and how many mail it back in, yes, that number might surprise some people as being insufficient,” said Ross Feingold, 38, the Hong Kong–based Asia chair of Republicans Abroad. “But we do have people who go to extraordinary efforts to their ballot in.”

With another extremely tight U.S. presidential race on the horizon, foreign Democrat and Republican operatives are hustling to corral and motivate as many like-minded American voters as possible.

Voting from foreign shores has never been easier. A full 23 states — including swing states North Carolina, Nevada and Colorado — allow registered voters to scan and send official ballots via email. (The catch? Election officials can see how you voted.) Florida, among the most influential battleground states, allows overseas Americans to transmit ballots through fax machines.

Energizing that thin segment of politically motivated Americans overseas is the primary mission of Democrats Abroad and Republicans Abroad. This is no easy feat. The 6 to 7 percent of overseas Americans who voted for president in 2008 are outperformed by even the most stubborn low-turnout demographics back home. Federal census data shows that 49 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds voted in the presidential race four years ago. So did 39 percent of eligible voters lacking a high school diploma.

Both political parties contend that, in Asia, a region attracting a growing number of Americans, this endeavor remains especially tough. Of the 6.3 million Americans living abroad, only 864,000 live in Asia, according to State Department figures that do not include military personnel.

The success of “get out the vote” drives can hinge on whether these far-flung political groups can throw a good bash. In Thailand, the local Democrats Abroad chapter doubles as a social network that maintains a book club and routinely rallies its faithful in Bangkok pubs. As the locally brewed Singha beer flows, its members prod newcomers into filling out voter registration forms.

“For some Americans here, we’re the only expat group they belong to,” said Gary Suwannarat, a 64-year-old retiree and veteran Democrats Abroad member who lives in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Suwannarat votes in what she calls a “very red” Colorado county.

“In 2008, our ‘get out the vote’ rallies were almost raucous,” she said. “We’d have someone representing the Obama campaign, loud music and a screen playing clips of Democrats saying funny things to lambaste Republicans. It all helps to register people on the spot.”

At a recent and more subdued event, the group screened the first 2012 presidential race debate in a Bangkok sports bar. “We’ve got a discount on wine and happy hour prices on beer all night long,” said Peter du Pont, 52, a clean energy consultant who heads Democrats Abroad Thailand, which boasts nearly 2,000 members. “I think we throw a pretty good party.”

“We’re at the center of a thriving region. It’s very fertile ground. There are probably tens of thousands of Americans living in Thailand, and we try to reach as many of them as possible,” he said. Discerning just how many of them favor the Democrat Party, however, relies on guesswork.

“We don’t have statistical data on the party affiliation of expatriates,” du Pont said. “But, yes, that would be very valuable.”

Thailand’s Republican Abroad chapter is a quieter network, managed largely by former U.S. service members who maintain a roughly 150-person contact list. “In Asia, when you live out here for a while, you can see America from an outside perspective. It’s pretty easy to tell things are not going well with the American economy,” said Paul Salvette, 32, an Iraq War veteran who runs a small company, BB eBooks, and acts as communications director for Republicans Abroad Thailand.

“I think a lot of the younger people out here — people working for NGOs, international teachers — they might be Democrats. But we’re out here too, especially in the business community,” Salvette said.

His group does not attempt to compete with his rivals’ register-while-you-party strategy. “We have some social outings but we keep it to a minimum. Republicans, we’re working for a living. A lot of us have families … I know my partying days are long over,” Salvette said. “I don’t want to say we’re a more mature, older group, but we don’t go to gatherings and cut loose.”

The two groups’ social profile suggests Thailand is a Democratic stronghold. Campaign donation reports suggest the contrary. According to Federal Election Commission filings analyzed by the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics, only two Southeast Asian nations appear in lists of Top 10 biggest campaign donors: Singapore ($16,000 donated) and Thailand ($3,500 donated). Both those amounts were sent to Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney.

Still, Obama is trouncing Romney in contributions from Americans located abroad. (Foreigners are forbidden from donating directly to presidential campaigns.) The same analysis shows Obama netting $779,000 from afar compared to Romney’s $383,000.

But despite Obama’s declared “pivot” of American focus towards Asia, Americans living in the region aren’t pivoting much money to his campaign. His top four foreign donor locations are the United Kingdom, France, Switzerland and Canada. Romney is favored by Asia-based donors. His top four include the United Kingdom followed by Hong Kong, Singapore and China.

“It should come as no surprise that the major cities are where we turn people out,” said Feingold, the Republicans Abroad Asia chairman. “It’s Hong Kong and Singapore, Shanghai and Beijing. These are big cities with often increasing populations of U.S. citizens versus the past.” Hong Kong, Asia’s most powerful financial center, enjoys a particularly healthy Republican Abroad turnout, Feingold said.

But the total financial contribution to both parties’ presidential bids — roughly $1.1 million as of August, according to federal reports — amounts to a few clinks in the campaign piggy banks. This paltry figure adds up to .08 percent of the $1.3 billion raised by the two parties combined.

Even the number of civilian Americans living abroad is debated: The non-profit American Citizens Abroad counts 5.2 million, roughly 1 million less than the State Department’s estimate. Depending on which entity is correct, the total U.S. diaspora is roughly equal to either the population of Colorado or Missouri. Were they engaged, Americans abroad could most certainly influence the outcome of a presidential elections.

But their resistance to voting or shelling out campaign cash perhaps explains why researchers have wasted so little time studying their voting habits.

“There’s just no good information on our occupations, income or the direction in which we vote,” Suwannarat said. “If anyone tells you that everyone overseas is either a Republican or a Democrat, they’re whistling Dixie.”

More GlobalPost

  • Mitt Romney attacks Obama’s foreign policy

    In a speech Monday, Mitt Romney charged that Obama’s time in office has been plagued by “weakness” and called for shifts in Middle East policy
    Stacey Leasca October 8, 2012

More Patrick Winn.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • This photo. President Barack Obama has a laugh during the unveiling of the George W. Bush Presidential Center in Dallas, Tx., Thursday. Former first lady Barbara Bush, who candidly admitted this week we've had enough Bushes in the White House, is unamused.
    Reuters/Jason Reed

  • Rescue workers converge Wednesday in Savar, Bangladesh, where the collapse of a garment building killed more than 300. Factory owners had ignored police orders to vacate the work site the day before.
    AP/A.M. Ahad

  • Police gather Wednesday at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to honor campus officer Sean Collier, who was allegedly killed in a shootout with the Boston Marathon bombing suspects last week.
    AP/Elise Amendola

  • Police tape closes the site of a car bomb that targeted the French embassy in Libya Tuesday. The explosion wounded two French guards and caused extensive damage to Tripoli's upscale al-Andalus neighborhood.
    AP/Abdul Majeed Forjani

  • Protestors rage outside the residence of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Sunday following the rape of a 5-year-old girl in New Delhi. The girl was allegedly kidnapped and tortured before being abandoned in a locked room for two days.
    AP/Manish Swarup

  • Clarksville, Mo., residents sit in a life boat Monday after a Mississippi River flooding, the 13th worst on record.
    AP/Jeff Roberson

  • Workers pause Wednesday for a memorial service at the site of the West, Tx., fertilizer plant explosion, which killed 14 people and left a crater more than 90 feet wide.
    AP/The San Antonio Express-News, Tom Reel

  • Aerial footage of the devastation following a 7.0 magnitude earthquake in China's Sichuan province last Saturday. At least 180 people were killed and as many as 11,000 injured in the quake.
    AP/Liu Yinghua

  • On Wednesday, Hazmat-suited federal authorities search a martial arts studio in Tupelo, Miss., once operated by Everett Dutschke, the newest lead in the increasingly twisty ricin case. Last week, President Barack Obama, Sen. Roger Wicker, R.-Miss., and a Mississippi judge were each sent letters laced with the deadly poison.
    AP/Rogelio V. Solis

  • The lighting of Freedom Hall at the George W. Bush Presidential Center Thursday is celebrated with (what else but) red, white and blue fireworks.
    AP/David J. Phillip

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 15 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
“This could be a career ender for Michele Bachmann”
188 points189 points | 88 comments
vote
Are millennials delusional? New research suggests that members of "Generation Me" are warped by a profound sense of entitlement
32 points33 points | 30 comments
vote
"Contrary to the myth of the happy, apple-cheeked great-great-grandmother, cooking has rarely been seen as a source of fulfillment, historically speaking." DIY domesticity, femivores, and refutations on the impacts of feminism on fast-food culture.
34 points35 points | 21 comments
vote
6 insidious ways you’re getting ripped off … And how to fight back
27 points28 points | 4 comments
vote
Peace Corps Volunteer’s Hellish Abortion Story - When Christine Carcano was raped in Peru, she felt the Peace Corps had her back.
25 points26 points | comment

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: "The Shelter Cycle": Raised in a cult

Recommendations