30,000 American Ex-Pats Vote in Israel
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
Expat Americans in Israel voting in the midterm U.S. congressional elections numbered 30,000, or 18 percent of those eligible to vote, according to a group that encourages such voting.
Matt Solomon, the director of iVoteIsrael, said Israel leads other countries by far in turnout.
In previous non-presidential elections, turnout among American expatriates around the world is one percent, Solomon said in a release Thursday, two days after the election, and it is five percent in presidential election years.
In 2012, a presidential year, there were 80,000 Americans in Israel who voted, or 50 percent of those eligible, he said, constituting 25 percent of all American expatriates who voted that year.
“This connection between countries demonstrates the breadth of the unique relationship between the two countries,” he said.
There was no polling done that might indicate how the Americans living in Israel voted in 2014. Polls say 69% of Jews in the U.S. voted for Democrats, although Israeli residents generally skew more to the right of the political spectrum.
U.S. voters in Israel hailed from 36 states.
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