The recent Dutch parliamentary elections and the popular vote on electronic ID in Switzerland revealed the considerable influence of the expat diaspora, which adds crucial votes to overall election results. National political parties, argue Adrian Favero and Gilles Pittoors, need to harness the power of transnational organisations to mobilise non-resident voters
The Dutch elections on 29 October 2025 saw a narrow race for the winning party, D66. With many expats voting for centre-left parties GroenLinks/PdvA (28.90%) and D66 (18.47%), it was unclear for a long time whether the leading party would win an additional seat. In Switzerland, the popular vote on the introduction of a digital identity card (e-ID) on 28 September 2025 was narrowly accepted by 50.4% of all voters. Among the Swiss living abroad, however, voters showed a much stronger support: 63.9% voted yes.
Clearly, investing in expat voter mobilisation could be a fruitful strategy for political parties. In 2025, of 849,557 Dutch citizens abroad, 133,589 had registered to vote. Registrations have increased by 24% since the last elections in 2023, in which there were 107,669 registered expat voters, yet only 86,894 went on to cast a vote in 2025.
Switzerland's overseas electorate has more than tripled over the last 30 years. In 2024, 826,700 Swiss nationals lived abroad. Of those aged 18+, 652,271 were eligible to vote. Only around 220,000, however, had registered.
The number of Dutch expat voter registrations has increased by 24% since 2023, and the Swiss electorate abroad has more than tripled over the last 30 years
Those numbers indicate that non-resident citizens’ electoral potential is too important for parties to ignore. But to what extent do parties invest in mobilising expat citizens?
For a new NWO project, we analysed national parties’ digital and physical transnational outreach in the Netherlands and Switzerland. What immediately stands out is their (almost) non-existent presence on social media. Most parties lack a dedicated account for citizens abroad on Facebook, X, TikTok, or Instagram. If they do, they don't update them regularly.
A second finding is parties' stark negligence of citizens abroad in their electoral manifestos. Most national parties fail to recognise the political issues – such as e-voting – that are particularly important to non-resident citizens. This reveals a surprising lack of interest in emigrants as a voter group. In most cases, parties focus instead on domestic problems and policies.
In the Netherlands and Switzerland, most national parties’ digital and physical transnational outreach is minimal. In their electoral manifestos, parties rarely recognise the political issues important to non-resident citizens
A third aspect we found in both countries is the tendency of bigger and well-institutionalised parties to invest more in transnational organisations to mobilise expat voters. Smaller and newer parties with 1–3 seats in the national parliament usually lack the resources to set up officially recognised branches with regular activities abroad. However, investment in transnational organisation to reach expat voters does not depend on parties’ right- or left-wing ideology.
Most parties we analysed have an international division but the strategic focus of these divisions differs between Dutch and Swiss parties. Parties in the Netherlands use their international division predominantly to maintain connections with like-minded parties abroad, to share knowledge, and to promote their values.
In Switzerland, the international division is often part of the official organisation that represents expat party members. This division is also the representative body for the parties’ branches abroad, or for non-resident party representatives. Alluding to this organisational aspect, Swiss parties generally invest more than Dutch parties in installing local sections on the ground overseas.
The Swiss are also more enthusiastic about encouraging members to launch a party branch abroad. Another obvious difference is parties' engagement with ideologically close parties in the European Parliament and the general European Multilevel Party Field. Swiss parties do not participate meaningfully in this.
Despite an increasing number of citizens living abroad, and a growth in voter registration in the Netherlands and Switzerland, most national political parties lack a strong investment in mobilising expat voters. Though parties are neither complete strangers to transnational activities – nor entirely disinterested in expat voter mobilisation or promoting their values abroad – parties in the Netherlands use their international divisions for ideational and educational purposes. They focus on promoting democratic institutions and ‘good politics’, by organising workshops and training abroad. In Switzerland, parties tend to use their international sections to make direct connections with non-resident citizens to politics in their home country. Only a few parties, however, operate with advanced transnational organisation.
Some parties may be reluctant to invest more in mobilising voters from abroad if the number of registered expat voters is too small, too heterogenous or too dispersed to justify the costs
Utilitarian considerations may play a role in parties’ reluctance to invest more in mobilising voters from abroad. For one, the group of registered expat voters may simply be too small, too heterogenous, and too dispersed for parties to justify the cost of setting up a physical transnational organisation. Related to this still rather low number of emigrant voters is the possible lack of bottom-up initiatives by party members to set up a branch abroad.
National political parties are instrumental in linking citizens with domestic politics, so it's important to ask why such connections work less efficiently across borders. We contend that national parties would benefit from dedicating more resources towards voter mobilisation across borders, particularly online. Democratic representation and voter mobilisation is a transnational matter.
If national parties continue to fall short in fulfilling their democratic function across borders, we need to debate alternatives. We suggest developing channels that exist side by side, including grassroot movements for cross-border representation, transnational media channels for expats, or dedicated party figureheads to mobilise the expat vote. There is an urgent need for such a fundamental reconsideration of the nature of democracy in Europe – nationally, supranationally, and transnationally.
This blog piece is part of the project Engaging with the diaspora: evaluating the transnational organisations of political parties, file number 406.XS.25.01.029 of the research programme SSH Open Competition XS, (partly) financed by the Dutch Research Council (NWO)
