Yeah, I heard something along those lines too.

Just about the only thing one can say for certain about Americans abroad is that a) there are a lot of them and b) it’s impossible to say how many there really are or how they break up into Democrat and Republican.

It’s usually been argued that they lean to the right because they’re mostly military or business executives, but this election season I’ve seen a mound of anecdotal evidence suggesting the average American abroad is embarassed as hell by George Bush and wants him out of there at all costs. (Or maybe that’s just me.)

My predication is that voting patterns of Americans abroad will follow that of Americans at home: The turnout on the right will be moderate to dismal, the turnout on the left massive. I, for one, haven’t bothered to vote since I moved abroad in 1996, but I will for the first time this year -- even though my vote won’t make any difference since both states I could vote in (New York and Massachusetts) always go overwhelmingly Democrat anyway.

Yeah, I think the Census is going to try to count us in 2010. That used to be true about military-biz execs, but I think the last decade has changed that significantly. Military and dependants will still be the largest single bloc, but there’s a big segment of people both early- and mid-career who are now working overseas, and not just execs getting posted somewhere. Entrepreneurs, computer nomads, post-docs in the sciences, finance people, and the whole teaching corps and NGO bunches. Plus everything from Mormon missionaries to Krishnas. My guess is that there isn’t a noticeable tilt, that the overseas population maps the stay-at-home crowd. Or that your Open Society people match your missionaries. Anecdotally, Bush is a huge motivator for Dems to come out of the woodwork and vote for someone else.