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Americans Moving To Canada: The Twitter Trend That Never Dies

Americans Already Threatening To Move To Canada
AP/Alamy

While the winner of Tuesday's U.S. election remains a mystery, one thing is for sure: no matter the outcome, untold throngs of Americans will flock to Twitter and Facebook to proclaim they're moving to Canada.

In fact, many people are already tweeting that they will be heading north if their chosen candidate doesn't claim victory.

While anecdotal evidence suggests Barack Obama supporters are more likely to make the threat, there are plenty of Republicans saying they'll move if Mitt Romney loses as well. You can see some of the funniest tweets so far in the slideshow below.

STORY CONTINUES BELOW SLIDESHOW

Tweets On Americans Moving To Canada

If history is any indication, Republicans are just as likely to threaten to move to Canada as Democrats. Earlier this year, when the Supreme Court upheld the legality of President Obama's health care legislation, angry Americans flocked to Twitter to say they were headed for Canada.

The fact that Canada already has universal, government-funded health care didn't seem to dissuade them.

And to be fair, Canada has had a Conservative government for more than six years, and many Republicans would likely find plenty to like about the policies of Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

But the fact that Canadian policy has been moving to the right may not have spread to the U.S. populace at large. The New York Times chimed in last week on the recurring exodus issue, citing Cher, Susan Sarandon and George Lopez as left-leaning celebrities who have said they may head north if Obama loses.

That article cited the Vietnam War, and the draft dodging it caused, as the most recent example of an actual mass migration of Americans to Canada. But was there a spike in immigration after George W. Bush was elected?

There was an increase in U.S. immigration to Canada around the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the subsequent re-election of Bush in 2004, according to Global. However, the increase was nowhere near the size of the Vietnam War spike.

The Times' article cites experts who believe the surge in immigration during the Bush years had more to do with the job market than politics, but it's entirely possible that ideology did have something to do with some of the migration.

Whatever direction U.S. politics takes moving forward, it seems the tradition of the 'moving to Canada' threat isn't going away anytime soon.

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