This election season has been exhausting for many Americans, and some have felt like they had little choice but to physically leave the country.
One traveler worked from Mexico City during the week leading up to the election. Another soon heads to her international safe haven: Barbados. A couple in Washington will be leaving the capital for a vacation in the English Cotswolds.
Some Americans who feel dissatisfied with the political process have made plans to move abroad indefinitely. For others, the contentious election and a growing interest in traveling abroad pushed them to take off in the weeks surrounding Election Day.
More Americans than ever have passports, according to the U.S. State Department, and international travel this November is up 9 percent from last year, according to AAA booking data.
Most years, so few Americans travel internationally in November, because of its proximity to the holidays, that fares are usually cheaper. But this year, some travelers have taken advantage of those deals to take a break from the heated political atmosphere in the United States.
This is not Sierra Gray’s first time leaving the country because of a tense political environment. Months after nationwide protests broke out in the wake of George Floyd’s murder in 2020, Ms. Gray, 31, temporarily relocated to Barbados.
“I just was extremely, deeply exhausted with America,” she said, adding that she stayed there through the end of the year and into 2021, when she watched the attack on the U.S. Capitol from afar.
“When the insurrection and everything happened, I was still in Barbados,” she said, “and I was like, ‘I’m so happy I’m here and not home.’”
Now, she’s returning to Barbados a week after she voted at the polls in Alabama on Election Day.
In past elections, Ms. Gray said, she was politically active and helped people register to vote. But this year, she said, she felt overwhelmed and wanted to limit her political engagement to voting.
“Barbados has been like my safe space when things get crazy in America, which is happening more and more frequently,” she said.
Clint Henderson, managing editor at The Points Guy, a website that offers tips on saving money while traveling, said that he extended a work trip in November because he wanted to give himself some time away from his regular environment and news consumption. He is in London this week, before flying to Hawaii.
Mr. Henderson said that travel usually declines during the week of a presidential election, and for some airlines, that remained true this year. But he added that traveling outside of peak season was becoming more popular in general as travelers look to avoid crowds and pay less.
Stephanie Cavazuti, a travel adviser for Fora Travel, has helped organize international getaways this month, which she said is unusual for November.
The amount of international trips booked for Thanksgiving week by her travel agency rose by about 7 percent from last year. Most travelers are headed to Mexico, Japan and France, but the largest jump in travel bookings was for trips to the Dominican Republic and other destinations in the Caribbean.
“Typically, you don’t see clients that are wanting to travel right before Thanksgiving and leave their families,” Ms. Cavazuti said. She said her clients did not disclose if their travel was related to politics.
A couple she is working with who both work in politics in Washington reached out to her with the subject line: “Post-Election Trip.” She planned them a trip to London and then the bucolic Cotswolds region of England, she said.
But while that couple packs to leave Washington, Søren Sloth, 34, a music education software salesman in the town of Skanderborg in Denmark, recently arrived in the U.S. capital with the opposite problem.
Mr. Sloth reconsidered a work trip to Washington months ago when he realized the conference he planned to attend was two days after Election Day. He turned to Reddit and asked users whether he should expect protests or violence on Nov. 6, when he planned to arrive.
Mr. Sloth said that he didn’t feel comfortable with American gun culture on a regular day, let alone when political tensions were high, and that the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, made him uneasy.
But with some reassurance from those who replied to the thread, he kept his travel plans. He booked a hotel near the convention and away from government buildings, so “if anything goes down,” he would be far from it.
With such a long campaign season for the presidential election, Mallory Roelke, 35, from Dallas, said she felt like she couldn’t escape it. She took a trip in late October to Italy, Greece and Turkey, and she said she was happy to put distance between herself and the United States as voting got underway.
“It just seems to encompass literally everything,” she said. “It bleeds into everyday life and every interaction you have with other people, and so that’s very stressful.”
Kasey Aleixo, 31, of Boston also left the United States a week before Election Day to tune out the noise.
She has been working remotely from Mexico City for the past week, but she said she wished she were even farther away and more distanced from her time zone, like in Japan or Australia, where she would have been less likely to catch a glimpse of the election news.
Still, she knew she’d feel more at ease across the border and could then avoid political conversations with family members and colleagues.
“I won’t be sitting watching CNN or something like that as background while I’m in Mexico City,” Ms. Aleixo said before her trip.
Ms. Gray and many travelers like her don’t plan to stay away for long. She said the key was finding a balance between political engagement and rest.
“I think it’s OK to take time to get away and rest and reset and do what’s best for you, for your mental health,” she said.
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