I know many American expats here in Berlin in the high-tech and academic worlds. Many say that the current political climate in the US greased the skids for their expatriation. No one says that the impetus was only the political situation, or that they will never return, but rather that it's a major factor in reducing the resistance to expatriation. For many, even those who aren't particularly partisan, the US political situation has become a source of constant low-level anxiety at best, and that generates a kind of exhaustion that makes it easy to throw up your hands and think "to hell with all this."