One minor reason for leaving the UK was the way the country was going but whatever happens there soon follows here anyway.

I'm not sure I would move specifically due to the outcome of an election, but a lot of the regular people balking at it are probably in for a rude awakening. As a lot of us have found, moving to another country is difficult. They don't let just anybody in. The celebrities can back up their threats, they are self-sufficient and I'm sure the country would enjoy their taxes. For everyday folk like you and me, it's just not realistic. From what I hear Canada is pretty strict. My friends here go there to service equipment, and are always held at immigration until the government can verify that there's not a source within the country that can do the work. Only then are they allowed to proceed into the country. This happens every time. I think I would need to see evidence that their decisions were negatively impacting my life, beyond reversal, before I would consider moving for that reason. In my situation, ObamaCare sucks, but hopefully it can be fixed 😉

Thanks for your thoughts Jason. You're dead right. I know many people who think they can just up and move to another country, and don't spare a thought for the legalities of it first. Also, it's not always a case of "the grass is greener". If you asked Irish people would they like to move elsewhere in the world, many would so yes. There's social/political issues everywhere. I can see why people would want to leave for things such civil war, genocide, dire poverty etc, but a change in president in a country like the US/Ireland is something I think most of us can live with.

I think many people would like to move if it was easy, but it's not. Work visas are not just handed out, so unless you have citizenship are indispensable income, are going to school, or are a family member of someone abroad, you are pretty much stuck where you are. Unless, you want to move to Sweden - they can give out work visas without having to prove that there is not another EU citizen that can do the job.

I can remember 8 years back when Americans were stating the same thing - they would move to Canada if Obama got elected. Well, he has almost completed 2 terms and there has not been a mass migration to Canada within the past 8 years.

I will say that this election frightens me, not that the US is going to dig itself into the ground or that one candidate over another will be able to change our polices as much as they are saying. What is frightening is the number of Americans that support some of the absurd ideals that are coming out during this campaign. The amount of support Trump actually has is frightening. I think everyone, including the GOP, thought he was a joke and that he would get washed out - well here we are and he is still in the lead for the Republican candidacy. Clearly, I'm not a fan of him.

All I can say is that I am glad my family and I are able to move abroad to Ireland in early May - though it was not driven by the current US politics, it will be nice to watch everything unfold from afar.

Our move was partially prompted by the politics of the region we were living in, to be honest. We are liberals and were living in an extreme conservative region. We (and I say this respectfully) were not compatible. On the surface that sounds very pedantic, but there were some extreme circumstances/incidents involved. I think our decision regarding our next move, when my husband completes his phd in three years, will certainly be partially influenced by the political climate in our home country.

Elections do have consequences. The Constitution of the United States in Article IV Section 4 guarantees each of the states of the union a republican form of government, which is to say a government that is representative of the people. When the Supreme Court decided that money is speech and that corporations are persons who have free speech (money speech) the laws against buying congress were doomed and the guarantee of a representative government was erased. Not even Montana, where the Immortal Irishman Thomas Meagher  gave his life for those republican principles, was allowed an opportunity to plead its case.  Even before money laundering agents of foreign powers assumed complete control of the executive, legislative and judicial branches of US government, we, a same-sex couple of thirty-three years, recognized by one of the United States as having equal rights, had already seen the need to prepare for the worst. Both of our mothers were Irish citizens, though one of them was easy to document.  I cannot express the depth of the appreciation we have of the people of the Republic of Ireland, who have changed Ireland's Constitution to make clear that unions such as ours are equal to any other.