In North Carolina, a bloc of New American Voters, recently naturalized citizens that have earned the right to vote, has the potential to play an out-sized 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.

North Carolina will be one of the most critical states during the November 2022 midterm elections and New American Voters can sway the outcome. The state has an open House seat and competitive Senate election (rated “lean R” by the Cook Political Report). This report offers data that illustrates how New American Voters can have an outsized impact.

• North Carolina is home to 70,579 citizens naturalized between 2016 and 2020. This number is nearly equal to the state’s November 2020 presidential election margin of 74,481 votes.

• Newly naturalized citizens in North Carolina are racially and ethnically diverse, with 40 percent from Asia, 36 percent from the Americas, 14 percent from the African continent, and approximately 10 percent from Europe.

• Approximately 64 percent of all persons who naturalized from 2016 to 2020 were under the age of 45 years old and around 55 percent are women.

• North Carolina ranks nearly 6th in the nation in the New American Voters Impact Model, which was created by the National Partnership for New Americans (NPNA) to showcase the potential of this critical voting bloc to influence the outcome of midterm elections.

These potential New American Voters face significant barriers to citizenship. This electoral season presents many challenges, including the need for organizations to adapt their voter engagement work to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, language access issues that can affect New American Voters’ ability to both register and to vote, and ongoing efforts to tighten and restrict access to voting, particularly targeting voters of color.

One form of voter suppression 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 700,000 pending citizenship applications nationwide, with 14,598 applications backlogged in USCIS’ offices in North Carolina.

While the national average processing delay is around 11 months, approximately 80 percent of applications are processed within 16.5 months in USCIS’ Charlotte office and approximately 80 percent of applications are processed within 15 months in USCIS’ Raleigh 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.

This year NPNA’s New American Voters Campaign, a non-partisan nationwide effort to encourage a potential voting bloc of 5.19 million newly naturalized citizens to register and vote is partnering the Latin American Coalition, North Carolina Asians Together and other local organizations in North Carolina to engage this emerging voting block in the Tar Heel state.

The 2022 collaboration continues momentum from the 2020 campaign which engaged newly naturalized citizens in linguistically and culturally competent ways.