US-Luxembourg dual citizens back Kamala Harris for president
The economy, reproductive rights, climate change, crime, immigration and foreign conflict are of concern for dual citizen voters from across the US
Dual US-Luxembourg citizens voting in Tuesday’s presidential election are unlikely to change the outcome of the race for the White House, but a snap survey by the Luxembourg Times shows that the majority of them will be voting for Vice-President Kamala Harris.
Close to 55% said they would be cast their ballot for the Harris-Walz ticket, while none was prepared to say they were voting for Donald Trump.
A further 9% declared themselves for a third party, with Jill Stein of the Greens being the stated choice of a handful of those. Another 28% said they did not want to reveal their voting intention, while 9% remained undecided a week from election day.
Altogether 34 dual citizens from nine states – Rhode Island, California, Vermont, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Georgia, Wisconsin, Minnesota and North Dakota – took part in the non-representative survey.
US voters cast their ballots on 5 November, with early voting already underway in many states. Polls show a virtual dead heat between Harris and Trump, including in many swing states that will determine the outcome of the election. Incumbent Joe Biden, aged 81, chose not to run for a second term.
Luxembourgers in Wisconsin
The results could be an indicator of a wind favouring the Democratic nominee. One place where many dual citizens will vote is the area around the town of Belgium, in the traditionally Republican stronghold of Ozaukee County, Wisconsin, which is home to a centre for Luxembourg culture and heritage. Ozaukee County voted Republican in all elections, with the exception of 1964, since 1940.
Ozaukee is one of the state’s so-called WOW counties, alongside Waukesha and Washington, that many commentators say are crucial to the outcome in Wisconsin, a key swing state that switched support from Trump to Biden in 2020. It is slowly following other suburban areas across the country in becoming more Democratic, especially among women voters. At the last presidential election in 2020, Joe Biden polled at 43.1% and became the first Democrat to win over 40% of the vote since Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964 (in 2016, Hillary Clinton got just 37%).
On the other hand, one of the largest concentrations of Luxembourg dual citizens in the USA is in the twin cities of Minneapolis and St Paul, in adjacent Minnesota. The twin cities have voted overwhelmingly Democrat since 1976, with Biden getting close to 65% of the vote in 2020, compared to just under 31% for Trump.
The issues that sway voters
The dual citizens the Luxembourg Times spoke with said that the economy, immigration, crime, protecting reproductive rights, addressing climate change, enacting gun control, the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, as well as rights for women, the LGBTQ+ community and racial equality were among the key issues that they would be voting on.
Bryan Koemptgen from Minnesota said that there is what he calls “a desperate need” to curtail illegal immigration. “The ‘incentive structure’ needs to change to discourage illegal immigration and encourage potential immigrants to follow legal processes,” he said.
Les Christoffel from Rhode Island is about to retire and said he is gravely concerned with the polarisation of US society. “Of particular concern to me is the increasingly politically orientated Supreme Court and the way in which the court could support Mr. Trump in his verbal threats to change our democratic foundation as we know it,” Christoffel, who plans to vote for Harris, said.
“The next president could, and most likely will, be choosing new judges and it’s critical that we seat judges that decide cases based on the law and not on political ideology,” he added.
But Michael, who wanted to be identified by first name only, said that crime was also a major issue. He claimed that crime has risen “much much higher over the last 3-4 years”, an assertion made by Trump in the presidential debate. “But [Trump] was ‘fact checked’ by so-called journalist David Muir [the co-host of the ABC broadcast],” he added.
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