Pennsylvania has been widely touted as a battleground state in the 2020 election, with political analysts examining the impact of men, women, blue-collar workers, college-educated voters and a host of other targeted groups.
A recent study suggests another group is worthy of attention: foreign-born voters.
Pennsylvania now has 465,395 immigrant voters who are eligible to vote, according to a study by the New American Economy, a bipartisan immigration advocacy group.
The number of eligible foreign-born voters rose 7.9 percent - about 34,000 voters - between 2017 and 2018, the study found.
The immigrant voting group could conceivably play a key role in determining which presidential candidate wins in Pennsylvania. President Donald Trump won the Keystone State by 44,000 votes - less than 1 percentage point - in 2016.
“It shows immigrants electoral power could really tip the scales in the upcoming elections,” said Nan Wu, deputy director of quantitative research at New American Economy.
The surge of foreign-born residents is helping Pennsylvania avoid a population decline, the study found. The number of Pennsylvanians born in the U.S. declined between 2017 and 2018, Wu noted.
“The immigration population growth reversed the population decline in Pennsylvania,” Wu said.
Pennsylvania was one of four states in the study where the influx of immigrants helped offset a loss in population (the others were Massachusetts, Mississippi and Iowa).
Foreign-born voters are represented in both the Republican and Democratic parties, but they tend to lean toward Democrats, said Lauren Copeland, a political analyst at Baldwin Wallace University.
“We know the foreign born citizen population is increasingly non-white,” Copeland said. “They tend to be more Democratic and liberal than native born citizens.”
Copeland said she’s not sure the foreign-born voting population in Pennsylvania would swing the state one way or the other.
But she said the growth of immigrant voters could be significant in the Southwest and Florida.
“I think they would play a really large role in the Sun Belt,” Copeland said.
Immigrants of all ages (including those who aren’t old enough to vote) account for 7.3 percent of Pennsylvania’s population, according to the study. There are about 35,000 foreign-born residents in the Harrisburg area, about 6 percent of the region’s population.
Nationwide, immigrants account for about 14 percent of the U.S. population, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
Across America, there are 21.4 million immigrants eligible to vote, according to the New American Economy study.
Kalpana Doppalapudi, a native of India, came to the United States 21 years ago. She founded Power-Women, a Harrisburg-based organization that helps immigrants make the transition to life in America. She’s organized networking events for women and public health clinics.
And she’s helped other immigrants register to vote.
“I try my best to motivate people to vote,” she said. "That’s one way we can do good for the community.”
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