In Wisconsin, a bloc of New American Voters — recently naturalized citizens that have earned the right to vote — has the potential to play an outsized role in the outcomes of critical federal and state races. This voting bloc is multiracial, multigenerational, geographically diverse, and majority female.

New American Voters hold distinct ideologies, experiences, and viewpoints, and will be motivated by a variety of issues this November.

With a competitive Senate election (rated “toss up” by the Cook Political Report) and a contested gubernatorial election (rated “toss up” by the Cook Political Report), Wisconsin will be one of the most critical states during the November 2022 midterm elections and New American Voters can sway the outcome.

Wisconsin ranks 7th in the nation according to the New American Voters Impact Model, which was created by the National Partnership for New Americans (NPNA) and the U.S.

Immigration Policy Center (USIPC) at the University of California, San Diego to showcase the potential of this critical voting bloc to influence the outcome of midterm elections in 50 states. This report offers data that illustrates how New American Voters can have an outsized impact.

• Wisconsin is home to 20,953 citizens naturalized between 2016 and 2020. This number exceeds the state’s 20,682-vote margin of victory in the 2020 presidential election.
• Newly naturalized citizens in Wisconsin are racially and ethnically diverse, with approximately 44 percent from Asia, 30 percent from the Americas, approximately 14 percent from Europe, and approximately 11 percent from the African continent.
• Approximately 65 percent of Wisconsin’s newly naturalized citizens are under the age of 45 and more than 53 percent were women.
• The Chicago-Naperville-Elgin metropolitan area, which includes Wisconsin, Illinois, and Indiana, has the state’s highest concentration of naturalized citizens, at over 960,000, followed by the Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington metropolitan area, which includes Wisconsin and Minnesota, with over 250,000, and then the Milwaukee-Waukesha-West Allis metropolitan area with approximately 74,000.

Wisconsin’s cohort is part of an estimated 5.19 million newly naturalized citizens across the U.S., according to New American Voters 2022: Harnessing the Power of Naturalized Citizens, a report released by NPNA, the Service Employees
International Union (SEIU), APIAVote, and USPIC. The power of this potential voting bloc is determined by individuals’ ability to both register and vote this November.

This electoral season presents many challenges, including the need for organizations to adapt their voter engagement work to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, language access issues, and ongoing efforts to tighten and restrict access to voting, particularly targeting voters of color.

Another challenge is the increasing backlog and processing delays of
citizenship applications.

According to the latest data from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), there are over 750,000 pending
citizenship applications nationwide, with 3,570 applications backlogged in USCIS’ offices in Wisconsin.

While the national average processing delay is around 11 months, approximately 80 percent of applications are processed within 13.5 months in USCIS’ Milwaukee office.

This means that immigrants who are eligible for citizenship and who would have otherwise naturalized and have had time to register to vote in this year’s elections may not be able to do so given the naturalization application backlog.

Wisconsin-based organizations, including Voces de la Frontera, are partnering with NPNA’s New American Voters Campaign, a non-partisan nationwide effort to address naturalization barriers and encourage newly naturalized citizens to register and vote.