Building upon relevant literatures in democratization, political party and the Middle East, this study aims to uncover the popular base of the Islamist parties. In particular, we underline the importance of three factors on the party choice of Egyptian citizens: the importance of the emigrant families, support for democracy and secularism. We argue that the emigrant families, particularly the emigration to the Gulf countries, have boosted the Islamist opposition through ideological transmission and monetary assistance in many oil-poor Arab countries. We also examine the increasingly divisive secular-Islamist cleavage, support for democracy and electoral behavior in Egyptian politics. In order to test our arguments, we conducted a nationwide survey with around 1,100 individuals within two weeks just after the Egyptian parliamentary elections completed in January 11, 2012. In order to test our argument, we ask extensive questions regarding whether one has/had a family member as an emigrant worker; if so, which country and a battery of questions on secularism, democracy and other important factors such as assessment of household and national economy. The survey was completed between January 12- January 25, 2012. Even though it was invalidated by the Constitutional Court in June 2012, the Egyptian parliamentary election provided us a unique opportunity to unpuzzle the determinants of support for Islamist and non-Islamist parties as this election has been the first free and fair election in the country where people were able to disclose their true preferences for political parties. We find that the emigrant families; the families that sent off at least one family member to another country for work, voted heavily for the Islamist parties, particularly the MB and the Salafi al-Nour. However, further analysis shows that there is no statistical difference in voting for the MB between the emigrant and the nonemigrant families in voting for the MB, while al-Nour’s popularity among the emigrant voters is substantial and statistically significant. We also find that support for secularism and democracy among the electorates is an important division between the Islamist parties and the rest.