A massively untapped voting bloc made up of millions of Americans — and which skews blue — is being mobilized in a frantic effort to deliver a decisive blow against Republicans next month.
Historically, of an estimated six-and-a-half million voting-age Americans living outside the country, only a tiny portion vote. In the United Kingdom, for example, the U.S. government’s Federal Voting Assistance Program shows only 3.8 percent of nearly 300,000 eligible voters cast ballots in the last midterms.
This year, however, promises to be different. According to a wing of the Democratic Party dedicated to organizing the overseas electorate, those living outside the States won’t stay silent about what’s happening back home this year.
“We are absolutely seeing engagement like we’ve never seen before in a midterm election year,” Netherlands resident Martha McDevitt-Pugh, the international chair of Democrats Abroad, told Raw Story.
And Jasper Lee, who heads the Australian branch of the group, said, “We hear a lot of anger about the things that Trump is doing.”
“Americans who live here, like Australians who live here, are mad. … I expect, quite frankly, to do twice as well as in 2018, and 2018 was already pretty fantastic for us. We had a blue wave. I’m seeing people who aren’t normally interested in [voting], and there is a lot of energy.”
Democrats Abroad has committees in nearly 50 countries, and works with Americans in nearly 190 — advising them of their rights as international voters and helping them to register and return ballots.
In the 2024 presidential election, there were 806,173 Americans registered to vote from overseas, not including 541,871 uniformed service members and their families, according to the Election Assistance Commission.
Indicators show that number is expected to be much higher this year. And, according to Democrats Abroad’s Global Fundraising Director Julia Bryan, “We are the bluest voting constituency.”
Lee said the number of voters his group helped in Australia last year doubled compared to the equivalent election year four years earlier.
He said Democrats Abroad Australia is on track to bring out a much greater increase this year compared to four years ago.
“We have these solid groups of people who we see every year who are always voting, but the group of people we’re seeing the change in is the people who have been away from the U.S. for a really long time, for who voting was an extra thing for them to do and they couldn’t justify it to themselves in the past,” he said.
“Now they’re seeing what’s going on and they’re saying they actually do want to make the effort, for the first time sometimes in many decades.”
“It’s becoming increasingly blatantly obvious that Trump is unable to govern,” said Freya Proudman, secretary of the Democrats Abroad committee in the United Kingdom.
She said expats living in that country have been bombarded by international news about Trump’s latest antics — and also have interactions with Brits, many of whom are appalled by what the U.S. president was doing.
“Americans abroad are really plugged in,” she said. “They want to make a difference. … I think sometimes living outside of your country makes you feel even more proud to be from your country.”
She added, “I think people also make comparisons between their country and then what they see back home. So, for example, the cost of eggs, right? We know what the cost of eggs in the UK is, and we look back in the U.S. and we think, ‘Oh my goodness, this is the affordability crisis. This is out of control.’
“ … So when you’re able to make those direct comparisons and see, wow, how out of control it is in America, like how badly managed the country is, how corrupt things are, that does make more Americans abroad aware of the situation. And people are driven more than ever.”
With more than 1,000 volunteers worldwide, Democrats Abroad has been seeking out Americans by any means necessary — with stands at universities, American bookshops, farmers markets and anywhere else they might find an expat community. In Austria, movie theaters featured an Odyssey-themed ad specifically aimed at Americans.
Eligible voters are given advice on their rights, how to ensure they register and receive ballots, and how best to return them.
That has been badly needed this year as Trump’s antics have instilled confusion — and uncertainty — into the system, said McDevitt-Pugh.
Among them were his push to disqualify mail-in ballots that were postmarked by election day but received later — a move that was shot down by the Supreme Court. The SAVE Act would also make overseas voting extremely difficult because it requires voters to register in person — a major obstacle for those not in the U.S. That act has stalled in the Senate.
There are also several executive orders targeting mail-in voting that are still being challenged in court.
“There’s been a lot of concern for our voters this year, and actually even starting in 2024 when Trump was running as a candidate,” McDevitt-Pugh said.
“Obviously we have to use the mail service, so it was very concerning and intimidating for our voters to realize that there were all these unknown things going on with the mail service, that the postal service might be doing things that would impede them from voting, that the courts were involved.
“That is part of the aim of this kind of activity. Whether or not it works, it really causes people to be very confused. We had a lot of people asking, are they going to be able to vote?”
The impact of overseas vote on American democracy has been demonstrated to be massive. In 2020, the Democrats’ margin of victory in Arizona was 10,457 votes. There were 18,435 overseas votes, though the party breakdown is not known. Similarly, in Georgia the same year, the state swung blue by a margin of victory of just 11,779 votes, with 5 million cast. Americans abroad mailed in 18,475 ballots.
“Those four or five days from election day until they called the election, everybody was watching the votes ticking up in Georgia,” said McDevitt-Pugh.
“Those were our ballots.”
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