Many Say They Want To Relocate Over Politics. Few Do.

Crossing the northern border suddenly looked a lot more tempting on June 24. When the Supreme Court released its ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization at 10:10 that morning — invalidating its landmark 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade — Google searches for “how to move to Canada from U.S.” spiked 850 percent in the hour afterward, according to Simon Rogers’s Google Trends newsletter. And queries on “how to become a Canadian citizen” jumped 550 percent.

Amidst the chaos and emotion of the Dobbs decision, this trend marked the reemergence of a common American sentiment: the threat to pack up and head to Canada when political events don’t turn out one’s way. In 2016, Democrats famously vowed to leave if Donald Trump won the presidency, and the pattern goes back further, during George W. Bush’s time in office, for example. Meanwhile, conservatives eyed the nation to the north after Barack Obama was elected president.