Although we started late in the overall election cycle, we decided in September to aggregate the statistics on our limited sample of voters to see to what extent it corresponds to classic overseas voter data.
The countries in which our sample voters reside (below) reflect more the enthusiasm of certain people in registering voters using this system than the actual countries where overseas voters tend to reside. France comes out ahead of the UK, for example, whereas there are more Americans living in the UK than in France.
Hats off, then, to those registering voters in those top countries!
(statistics for September-November 2008)
The states in which our voters cast their ballots, however (above), tend to coincide with the traditional “top ten” in other overseas voter surveys.
Finally, our sample divides very roughly (below) into approximately 1/3 voters who came abroad less than 2 years ago, 1/3 who came abroad from 2 to 10 years ago, and 1/3 who have lived abroad for more than 10 years. A little more than 3%, however, were born abroad and have never or only briefly/sporadically lived in the United States. These are voters that FAWCO and its partner organizations want to protect by seeking legislation to ensure that they can vote at the voting address of their eligible U.S. citizen parent.
FAWCO is grateful to the ongoing support of Overseas Vote Foundation, which made it possible to offer this valuable service to FAWCO members and others over the FAWCO website. We look forward to starting earlier and registering even more voters in 2010!