In New Jersey , 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.

New Jersey will be one of the most critical states for New American Voters during the November 2022 midterm elections, as they can significantly sway the outcome.

New Jersey ranks 12th 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.

• New Jersey is home to 177,890 citizens naturalized between 2016 and 2020. The state ranks behind only California, Florida, New York, and Texas when it comes to the highest number of newly naturalized citizens in the country.

• Newly naturalized citizens in New Jersey are racially and ethnically diverse, with approximately 44 percent from the Americas, 36 percent from Asia, 11 percent from Europe, and 9 percent from the African continent.

• Approximately 59 percent are under the age of 45 years old and more than 55 percent are women.

• The New York-Newark-Jersey City metropolitan area, which includes New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania, has the state’s highest concentration of naturalized citizens, at nearly 3.9 million naturalized, followed by the Philadelphia-

• Camden-Wilmington metropolitan area, which includes New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, with approximately 450,000, and then the Allentown-Bethlehem-Easton metropolitan area, which includes New Jersey and Pennsylvania, with approximately 48,000.

New Jersey’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 that has emerged in recent years 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 41,058 applications backlogged in USCIS’ offices in New Jersey.

While the national average processing delay is around 11 months, approximately 80 percent of applications are processed within 16 months in USCIS’ Mount Laurel office and approximately 80 percent of applications are processed within 16.5 months in USCIS’ Newark 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.

New Jersey-based organizations, including Make the Road New Jersey and SEIU 32BJ, 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.