These Americans Say They’ll Move Abroad if Their Candidate Loses

We spoke with Americans who are packing up and moving out.

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“I’m moving to Canada” has long been a liberal refrain. But both liberals and conservatives voters said they would considering leaving the country if they are disappointed by next month’s election.

Good evening! Lots of people muse about leaving the country if an election doesn’t go their way. My colleague, Ronda Kaysen, who covers real estate, spoke with Americans who say they’re actually planning to. Plus, we look at what it’s like to listen to a whole speech by former President Trump. — Jess Bidgood

In Boston, Steven Seltzer, the 73-year-old son of a Holocaust survivor, was raised to prepare for the worst. So in 2022, 83 years after his mother fled Nazi Germany, he became a German citizen, along with his two grown sons, providing his family an out should Donald Trump win the November election.

He was “trained to be vigilant and these were exactly the signs you were supposed to be looking for,” he said.

In Virginia Beach, Robert Horton, a Republican, is making plans to move by the end of the year to Paris, where he qualified for a long-stay visa. Certain Kamala Harris will win the presidential election in November, Horton, a 78-year-old real estate developer, does not want to stay in a country headed in a direction he sees as terrifying.

“God knows we’ve lost respect for our country, for our people, for ourselves, for our standards,” he told me. “It’s a terrible country now compared to what it used to be.”

These two men were among the nearly 2,000 Times readers who responded to a question I posed in this newsletter over the summer: Would Americans consider moving abroad should their preferred candidate lose the presidential election?

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