A new report released this week highlights the potential impact that recently naturalized immigrants may have in local and national elections, especially in swing states.

The University of Southern California’s Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration (CSII) launched the report, Rock the (Naturalized) Vote (http://csii.usc.edu/RockTheNaturalizedVote.html), along with an interactive, online mapping tool (http://csii.usc.edu/RockTheNaturalizedVote.html) that identifies the share of recently naturalized immigrants in the voting-age citizen population across the U.S.

Both tools illustrate the potential importance of this vote and will help groups like the National Partnership for New Americans (Partnership) identify areas of the country where New Americans are registering to vote and getting engaged. CSII’s maps show that the most important gap in electoral participation by naturalized citizens comes at the point of registration rather than voting and that, once registered, New Americans vote at rates nearly identical to those of native born Americans.

“The National Partnership for New Americans has assisted over 9,000 immigrants to our nation apply for U.S. citizenship this year, and we have registered tens of thousands of naturalized immigrants to vote,” said Joshua Hoyt, Co-chair of the Partnership and Chief Strategy Executive the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. “The Center has created powerful maps that illustrate how immigrants who are Americans by choice are changing the electoral map of our country.”

Newly naturalized citizens of voting age are approximately 3.6 percent of the voting-age citizen population which represents more than the margin of victory in many recent local and national elections. “We hope that the data inspires a more civil, balanced and solutions-oriented conversation about immigration—one in which realistic solutions are proposed and agreed upon so that voters can concentrate on other issues such as the economy,” said Dr. Manuel Pastor, director of USC’s Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration.