External Voting Rights from a Citizen Perspective – Comparing Resident and Non-resident Citizens' Attitudes towards External Voting

Abstract

The number of countries that have adopted policies allowing emigrants to participate in home country elections from abroad has increased greatly in the last few decades. The enfranchisement of non-resident citizens in home country elections is, nevertheless, somewhat controversial because it gives political influence to individuals who are unlikely to be affected by the outcome of an election. Despite an active debate on external voting rights among political theorists, little is known what the citizens themselves think of this practice. To examine how both non-resident and resident citizens perceive external voting rights, we use two surveys of Finnish citizens from 2019. The first survey was directed to Finnish citizens living abroad (n = 1,949), and the second was conducted using an online panel consisting of Finnish citizens living in Finland (n = 994). Both surveys included items with normative questions about external voting rights, which allows us to compare what resident and non-resident citizens think of the enfranchisement of external citizens. Our findings suggest that resident citizens view external voting rights more negatively than non-resident citizens. The factors associated with these attitudes are also quite different for the two examined populations. For resident citizens more education and ideological self-placement to the left is associated with more positive views of external voting rights, while experience of having voted from abroad and dissatisfaction with democracy in the host country is associated with more positive views among non-resident citizens.