2024 State of the Overseas Voter
About 2.2 million citizens living abroad are eligible to vote absentee — in many cases, even if they have never lived in the United States. They're covered by the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA) of 1986, which requires that states allow military members, their eligible family and overseas citizens to vote absentee in federal elections.
Voting is more complicated for citizens living abroad than for local voters. They have to update their registration and explicitly request an absentee ballot — potentially every year. They must follow their state's rules on how election paperwork can be sent and received, which may require long mailing times or technology not readily available. Most need to vote earlier than local voters so that their ballots are received by voting deadlines.
To learn more about overseas voters and help them navigate the absentee voting process, FVAP conducts the Overseas Citizen Population Analysis (OCPA) every two years following the general election. It combines data from U.S. and foreign governments, state records of ballot requests and voting, and a survey of 5,814 overseas citizens who requested an absentee ballot for the 2024 General Election — the only representative survey of this group.
Here are some highlights of overseas citizen voting in 2024.
OUT OF THE 2.2 MILLION OVERSEAS CITIZENS ELIGIBLE TO VOTE, 11% VOTED IN 2024
Since there is no list of all U.S. citizens living abroad, FVAP compiles foreign and domestic data to estimate the number of voting-age U.S. citizens living in nearly 200 countries around the world. Not every individual in the overseas citizen population is 18 years of age or older and thus old enough to vote. Of the estimated 3.3 million overseas citizens in 2024, about 2.2 million were of voting age.
OF THE ESTIMATED 2.2 MILLION ELIGIBLE OVERSEAS VOTERS, MOST RESIDE IN CANADA AND THE UNITED KINGDOM
Two of the locations with the largest populations of voting-age U.S. citizens are in the total overseas-citizen population's top three countries (Canada and the United Kingdom).
CITIZENS LIVING ABROAD ARE MUCH LESS LIKELY TO VOTE THAN THOSE STATESIDE
The voting rate among voting-age individuals in the United States was approximately 76.1 percent in the 2024 General Election, compared to the estimated 11.0 percent voting rate for overseas citizens. FVAP calls the difference the voting gap. While some overseas citizens don't want to vote, in 2024 about 20.6 percent of the gap between domestic and overseas voting rates could be attributed to real or perceived obstacles overseas citizens encountered that domestic voters do not face.
The portion of the voting gap attributable to real or perceived obstacles varies substantially among different regions of the world, with high-obstacle countries primarily concentrated in Eastern Europe/Asia, South/Central America/Caribbean, and Africa. FVAP's Overseas Citizen Population Analysis Technical Report includes a map categorizing each country by the size of its obstacle gap.
ABOUT ONE-FIFTH REPORT THAT THE POSTAL SYSTEM IN THEIR COUNTRY WAS SOMEWHAT OR VERY UNRELIABLE
Results from the 2024 OCPS demonstrate a common challenge that overseas citizens encounter when voting: mailing systems outside of the United States are often perceived as unreliable.
ELECTRONIC BALLOT RETURN SUCCESS RIVALS OR EXCEEDS MAIL RETURN SUCCESS ACROSS ALL OBSTACLE TIERS
In the 2024 election, absentee voters around the world who returned their ballots electronically generally had more success than those who relied on mail. The only place this pattern didn't hold was in countries facing the toughest voting challenges, where both methods performed about the same. In earlier elections, electronic voting was mostly used in places where mail delivery was especially difficult, suggesting it helped overcome those barriers. This year, however, differences in success rates between mail and electronic voting narrowed across many regions. As a result, voting success looked more similar no matter how absentee ballots were returned, highlighting the growing availability and popularity of electronic returns in 2024.
Even as electronic ballot return becomes more common, many absentee voters continue to rely on mail. In 2024, just over three in five voters (62 percent) with the option to return their ballot electronically did so. This choice reflects a mix of factors, including voter demographics, personal preferences, perceptions of mail versus electronic voting, differences in state policies, and potential lack of awareness of electronic options, even among successful absentee voters.
THE OVERSEAS BALLOT REQUEST RATE WAS HIGHEST IN OCEANIA
In 2024, about one in five (21.2 percent) of Oceania's overseas citizen voting population requested an absentee ballot, and 15.3 percent successfully returned one — the highest rates of any region. By contrast, East Asia had the lowest participation, with just 6.8 percent requesting a ballot and 4.7 percent returning one. Sub-Saharan Africa ranked second in requests at 19.6 percent, but its return rate (13.0 percent) was lower than Europe's, where slightly fewer voters requested ballots (19.5 percent), yet more successfully returned them (14.8 percent). These differences highlight the real and perceived obstacles absentee voters encounter across regions.
The report on overseas citizens and their voting behaviors in 2024 includes:
Data on U.S. Citizens Living and Voting from Abroad
FVAP conducts the Overseas Citizen Population Analysis (OCPA) after each federal election cycle to meet its federal requirement for a statistical analysis of overseas citizen participation rates. The study estimates the number of U.S. citizens living abroad, assesses overseas voting participation, monitors how voters are navigating the absentee voting process from abroad, and informs efforts to remove obstacles.
This State of the Overseas Voter highlights recent statistics on the numbers of voting-age citizens living overseas and their voting experiences. More information on U.S. voters living abroad can be found in FVAP's Report to Congress.
Estimates of U.S. citizens living abroad draw on several sources: foreign country data on U.S. citizens living within their borders, U.S. government administrative data on overseas citizens, and data from academic studies examining factors affecting the number of U.S. citizens living in any given country around the world. Foreign governments rely upon censuses and registries for tracking U.S. citizens within their countries, although there is wide discrepancy in who each considers to be a U.S. citizen.
See all previous volumes of the Overseas Citizen Population Analysis:
Separately, FVAP releases research on the voting experiences of citizens serving on active military duty as part of the State of the Military Voter.
