Immigrant voters are gaining importance in a closely fought race for president. In 2000, there were 10.7 million adult new citizens in the U.S., 6.2 million of whom were registered to vote and 5.4 million actually voted, according to the Immigration Policy Center (IPC) of the American Immigration Law Foundation. These numbers have only increased since the last presidential election. The votes of new citizens are particularly important in swing states –– such as Arizona, Florida, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Washington –– where victory or defeat in an election may be decided by relatively few voters. Incidentally, in the 2000 elections the Republicans won Florida by 537 votes.

The number of Latinos and Asian Pacific and Islander Americans who became U.S. citizens, re-gistered to vote, and actually voted increased substantially between 1996 and 2000, says the organization in a new report it released recently, entitled ‘Power and Potential: The Growing Electoral Clout of New Citizens,’ which is part of the IPC’s Immigration Policy In Focus series. Meanwhile, the number of non-Latino Whites registered to vote declined by 0.5 percent during this period.

State	Asian Indians	% of IA Eligible to Vote	# Eligible to Vote	# Who are Likely to Vote (Based on 2000, Pres. Election)	# Who are Likely to Vote (Based on 2002, Cong. Election)
United States Alabama Alaska Arizona Arkansas California Colorado Connecticut Delaware District of Columbia Florida Georgia Hawaii Idaho Illinois Indiana Iowa Kansas Kentucky Louisiana Maine Maryland Massachusetts Michigan Minnesota Mississippi Missouri Montana Nebraska Nevada New Hampshire New Jersey New Mexico New York North Carolina North Dakota Ohio Oklahoma Oregon Pennsylvania Rhode Island South Carolina South Dakota Tennessee Texas Utah Vermont Virginia Washington West Virginia Wisconsin Wyoming Puerto Rico	1,899,599 8,186 981 17,042 3,820 360,392 13,809 26,654 5,691 3,507 84,527 50,734 3,145 1,560 133,978 16,683 6,358 9,230 7,876 9,835 1,303 55,245 48,588 60,236 19,963 4,609 14,028 531 3,753 6,756 4,258 180,957 3,802 296,056 29,283 927 43,119 9,940 11,650 62,616 3,593 9,578 727 14,548 142,689 3,800 1,064 54,781 28,614 3,348 14,800 429 12,369	35.82% 41.32% 52.58% 33.40% 30.82% 35.55% 28.43% 36.58% 33.07% 54.79% 38.39% 35.28% 55.40% 26.17% 36.99% 36.42% 31.25% 34.92% 32.25% 43.10% 35.74% 42.25% 33.10% 31.58% 27.62% 42.81% 39.45% 36.75% 27.69% 43.16% 24.75% 34.56% 43.70% 37.33% 34.00% 28.80% 35.74% 37.15% 32.13% 36.96% 40.19% 38.27% 21.20% 38.62% 33.70% 28.76% 39.30% 35.53% 33.40% 49.67% 31.37% 45.28% 56.35%	680,436 3,382 516 5,692 1,177 128,119 3,926 9,750 1,882 1,921 32,450 17,899 1,742 408 49,558 6,076 1,987 3,223 2,540 4,239 466 23,341 16,083 19,023 5,514 1,973 5,534 195 1,039 2,916 1,054 62,539 1,661 110,518 9,956 267 15,411 3,693 3,743 23,143 1,444 3,666 154 5,618 48,086 1,093 418 19,464 9,557 1,663 4,643 194 6,970	304,835 1,515 231 2,550 527 57,397 1,759 4,368 843 861 14,538 8,019 781 183 22,202 2,722 890 1,444 1,138 1,899 209 10,457 7,205 8,522 2,470 884 2,479 87 466 1,306 472 28,017 744 49,512 4,460 120 6,904 1,654 1,677 10,368 647 1,642 69 2,517 21,543 490 187 8,720 4,282 745 2,080 87 3,123	257,205 1,279 195 2,152 445 48,429 1,484 3,686 711 726 12,266 6,766 659 154 18,733 2,297 751 1,218 960 1,602 176 8,823 6,079 7,191 2,084 746 2,092 74 393 1,102 398 23,640 628 41,776 3,763 101 5,825 1,396 1,415 8,748 546 1,386 58 2,124 18,177 413 158 7,357 3,613 629 1,755 73 2,635

Based on the 2000 Census, given the percentage of Indian Americans eligible to vote and the population of Indian Americans in each state, the number of Indian Americans eligible to vote has been depicted in the Table attached. Using the Current Population Survey from the U.S. Census Bureau, the Table estimates the number of Indian Americans who are likely to vote in each state if the voter turnout was the same as the 2000 Presidential Election and 2002 Congressional Election. –– Data from U.S. Census 2000 compiled by Nisha Jain for the Indian American Center for Political Awareness (IACPA)