Many posts have discussed immigration. Illegal voting by noncitizens is rare. But naturalized citizens voting legally is common.
An estimated 250 million people in the United States are eligible to vote in this year’s midterm elections. Around one-in-ten of them – or 25 million – are naturalized citizens, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data.
Naturalized citizens are people who were born outside the U.S. and gained American citizenship through naturalization. They are generally eligible to vote if they are at least 18 years old, as is the case with people born in the U.S. and those born abroad to American parents.
The number of naturalized citizens who are eligible to vote more than doubled from 2000 to 2024 (the most recent year for which data is available). That is much larger than the increase in the total eligible voter population during that time period. In 2000, approximately 12 million people – about 6.2% of all eligible voters that year – were naturalized citizens.
