External voting in national elections has been recently under scrutiny through normative, institutional, or elite-centered lenses. Yet, little is known about why residents oppose external voting especially in countries with large communities of co-nationals abroad and where emigrant remittances brin relevant financial contributions. This article addresses this gap using individual level data from surveys conducted in late 2025 and early 2026 on national representative samples in Czechia, Poland and Romania. The results indicate that considerable shares of respondents oppose external voting, with visible cross-country variation, and the main drivers are divergent electoral preferences with external voters, low democratic values and negative attitudes towards immigrants.
