A recent frenzy of attempts to redraw electoral districts in the United States highlights a struggle over voice and silence in democracy. When districts are carved to maximize one ideological perspective, the representation of large groups of Americans with opposing views can be diluted or erased. In many newly drawn Republican state maps, it will be as if those citizens have simply vanished.
Since Donald Trump enacted policies that undermine institutional checks and balances, new population data suggests that many such citizens have departed quite literally. They emigrated. And this trend may be even more troubling for US democracy.
Counting emigrants is complicated, but a Wall Street Journal analysis of 15 countries providing full or partial 2025 data found that at least 180,000 Americans voluntarily left the country last year—a number likely to grow as more nations release complete figures. The number of Americans arriving in the European Union’s 27 member states is at a record high and rising; in some cases, like Ireland, it has doubled over the past year alone.
In other circumstances, Americans are being pressured to leave. The Department of Homeland Security reported 675,000 deportations in 2025, but also 2.2 million “self-deportations,” which likely include US citizens leaving with undocumented or otherwise vulnerable family members. According to a Mexican government survey cited by the US Census Bureau, 50,000 US-born Mexican Americans moved south across the border last year.
Because many of these émigrés are disenchanted liberals and others made to feel unwelcome in the United States, some have termed this outward flow the “Donald Dash.” But according to research across 149 countries, the recent exodus reflects a broader global pattern: a sorting of people with democratic values into more democratic countries—a “democratic drain.”
Prospective emigrants, even those who are not politically active, tend to be more supportive of democratic institutions and liberal norms than those they leave behind. Their departures drain not only economic capital—the “brain drain” economists have long observed—but political capital as well.
With roughly 330 million people still living in the United States, these departures may appear marginal. But many newly proposed electoral districts in places such as Florida and Texas will be decided by only a few thousand voters. And the outflow is unlikely to slow. Gallup polling shows that for two consecutive years, about one in five Americans say they would move permanently to another country if given the chance—a rate higher than the world average and comparable to traditional sending countries such as Guatemala or Mexico.
At the same time, net international migration—the difference between how many people enter the United States and how many leave—is falling sharply. After peaking at 2.7 million in 2024, it declined to 1.3 million in 2025 and is projected to fall further. According to the Brookings Institution, the United States may already be experiencing net population loss for the first time in 50 years.
The deeper concern is not just how many leave, but who. Decades of research shows that prospective migrants tend to be younger, more educated, more open-minded, and more entrepreneurial than average. This work builds upon these studies to suggest they are also more committed to the integrity of liberal democratic institutions.
That matters because democracies depend not only on constitutions, courts, and elections, but on citizens willing to defend them. When a country loses a disproportionate share of these people, it weakens the civic foundation on which democratic resilience rests.
In the United States—where the Trump administration has sought to limit reproductive rights, rolled back enforcement of non-discrimination protections, and overlooked accusations of sexual misconduct against senior officials—many of those leaving are likely to be young women. According to Gallup, 40% of women aged 15 to 44 say they would move abroad permanently if they could—twice the rate of men their age, and four times the rate in 2014, when it was generally in line with other age and gender groups.
Those leaving are also disproportionately affluent and educated. Demand has surged for pricey consulting services that help Americans secure residency or citizenship abroad. UBS, an international wealth management firm, reported that 31 of 87 billionaire clients had already relocated at least once in 2025, with others considering it. At least half the world’s countries offer visas or fast-track citizenship to foreigners in exchange for investments or cash.
After research funding cuts early in the second Trump administration, American scientists submitted 32% more job applications to foreign institutions in the first quarter of 2025 than during the same period the year before. A group of American scholars who study authoritarianism drew attention when they publicly relocated, convinced of the country’s democratic decline. Some critics dismissed these departures as self-serving. But as research suggests, they are also self-defeating. Nothing is more likely to hasten democratic erosion than the exit of those most committed to resisting it.
This is not to shame those who leave for career opportunities, family, or freedom. Migration is a deeply personal decision, and societies should protect the rights of those who move. But leaving the US democracy does little to save it.
Already, hundreds of thousands of Americans are pursuing a “plan B” by applying for foreign citizenship. The New Yorker even produced a narrative guide for doing so. Applications for Irish and British citizenship through ancestry surged last year, reaching record levels.
If this trend continues, the United States risks joining countries such as Hungary, India, Israel, Turkey, and other democracies that have experienced self-reinforcing cycles of authoritarian slippage and outmigration. To break that cycle, those contemplating exit must recognize that while they can certainly shape their own futures by leaving, they also shape the future at home. American democracy is counting on them.
