Membership and Transnational Campaign Activism in Democrats Abroad Canada

• In Event: Diaspora Politics: Transnationalism from Above and from Below

Abstract

More than one-hundred countries have extended voting rights to emigrant citizens. With the extension of such rights comes opportunities for political parties to expand their reach transnationally. While the scholarly literature on partisan activism in democracies around the world is voluminous, very little is known about what prompts emigrants to engage in party politics in their country of origin. This paper sheds fresh light on this question by focusing on Americans living in Canada, the leading destination for US emigrants. During the US midterm campaigns of 2022, we conducted a large (N=1,189) nationwide survey of Americans who are members of “Democrats Abroad Canada,” the official branch of the Democratic Party in that country. To our knowledge, this is the first systematic survey ever conducted of American partisans living abroad. The Republican Party has no comparable organizational infrastructure for American emigrants in Canada or any other country. Simultaneous with the survey of “Democrats Abroad” members, we fielded a separate general survey of US citizens living in Canada (N=586). This second survey provides a benchmark for the “Democrats Abroad” sample; pooling the two datasets allows us to estimate discrete choice models to predict party membership. Preliminary findings suggest that after controlling for demographic background variables and many political attitudes, social networking plays a key part in prompting membership in “Democrats Abroad.” In subsequent analysis, we model transnational campaign activism among party members, and we examine the implications of this involvement for the incorporation of American emigrants into the Canadian party system.

Authors

• James A. McCann, Purdue University

• Ronald B. Rapoport, College of William & Mary