1 in 10 eligible voters in the U.S. are naturalized citizens

Report Issue

Please complete the required fields.

Your Name

Email

Reason (required)
This post contains broken linksPost has incorrect informationPost has spamCopyright IssueOther

Description

Submit

More immigrants than ever before call the United States home. Many of them have become U.S. citizens through naturalization, making them eligible to vote in November’s presidential election. In fact, naturalized citizens’ numbers are growing as the federal government processes citizenship applications at its fastest rate in years.

Here’s a closer look at the nearly 24 million immigrant adults who are naturalized citizens, according to a Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data.

Throughout this analysis, we use the terms “eligible voters” and “electorate” to refer to U.S. citizens ages 18 and older.

1.Naturalized citizens make up a record number of eligible voters, according to the 2022 American Community Survey. That year, 23.8 million naturalized citizens were eligible to vote, accounting for about 10% of the U.S. electorate.

2.Most naturalized citizen eligible voters have lived in the U.S. for more than 20 years. About three-quarters of immigrant eligible voters (73%) have lived in the U.S. for more than two decades. Another 20% have lived in the country for 11 to 20 years, while relatively few (8%) have been in the U.S. for a decade or less.

3.Among naturalized citizen eligible voters, more than half (55%) live in just four states: California, Florida, New York and Texas. These four states are also the country’s most populous when looking at eligible voters overall. Combined, they’re home to roughly a third of the U.S. electorate (32%).

4.The naturalized citizen share of the electorate differs widely in some potential battleground states in the 2024 election. Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are widely considered to be among the swing states this fall. The share of eligible voters who are naturalized citizens differs considerably across these states.

5.The top countries of origin for adult naturalized citizens in the U.S. are Mexico, India, China, the Philippines and Vietnam. About 3.7 million immigrants who are eligible to vote in the U.S. (15%) hail from Mexico – the largest group from any one country. India (8%), China (7%), the Philippines (6%) and Vietnam (4%) round out the top five countries of origin.