The December 2021 issue of High Road Policy (HRP) explores the possibility of passing a local law in Buffalo that would allow non-citizens (immigrants) the right to vote in local elections — similar to the law set to take effect in New York City in 2023. Click here to download and read the issue.

This page is a data companion to the policy proposal developed in HRP Vol. 2, No. 4. The main portal below maps the distribution of non-citizen voting-age persons, by census tract, in the City of Buffalo. Data come from the most recent (2015-19) U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey (ACS), which asks respondents their place of birth and citizenship status. Data collected on the latter variable are not shared with any third parties, including federal immigration authorities. Because non-citizens are routinely undercounted in data collection efforts like U.S. Census surveys, the ACS data should be considered a “floor” for the size of a neighborhood’s immigrant/non-citizen population. Actual figures are likely to be meaningfully larger.

The default settings on the mapping portal show indicators — namely, adult poverty rates and voter turnout in the most recent local election (2021) as a function of voting-age population (VAP) — for the entire City. To explore the data for specific census tracts or planning neighborhoods, either: (1) click a tract on the map to filter the data for that tract [likewise, a user can click and drag their mouse to select multiple tracts at once]; or (2) use the dropdown menu in the lower-right of the portal to select one of the City of Buffalo’s official “planning neighborhoods” to update the indicators for that neighborhood.

Next, the following scatterplot, which is Figure 1 in the December 2021 issue of HRP, visualizes the weakly positive, nonrandom association between 2010-20 population growth and presence of non-citizens in Buffalo’s census tracts. In general, the higher a census tract’s non-citizen share of VAP (source: 2015-19 ACS), the larger was its percent change in population between 2010 and 2020 (note: 2020 population figures were normalized to 2010 census tract boundaries using NHGIS’s geographic crosswalk files).

The final visualization is Figure 4 from the December 2021 issue of HRP. The scatterplot illustrates a weakly negative, nonrandom correlation between registered voter turnout in the 2021 Buffalo General (local) Election and non-citizen share of VAP in Buffalo census tracts (note: the fitted relationship uses a log transformation). Using the solid, citywide average lines for reference, it is clear that the overwhelming majority of tracts with above-average non-citizen shares of VAP experienced below-average levels of turnout among eligible, registered voters. The implication of these patterns is that tracts with relatively high concentrations of non-citizens are doubly under-represented: in addition to non-citizens being ineligible to vote, persons who are eligible participate at atypically low rates.