Very little is known about the relationship between migration and
institutions. This paper is the first to show that emigration to
democratic countries can affect election results in the country of
origin. Using data from Moldova, we study the impact of emigration
to different destinations on the voting patterns of those who stay
behind. For identification, we exploit the fact that we can control for
locality-level electoral preferences before migration took off in the
late 1990s and that migration is directed to both more democratic
Western Europe and less democratic Russia. Our key finding is that
westward migration substantially reduced electoral support for the
Communist Party. The effects are sufficiently large to explain the fall
of the long-ruling Communist government in Moldova.