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Section 4:Discussion of Findings

This section covers the key findings that can lead to a more comprehensive report in order to better understand and measure the potential of Dominican-Americans, as a community with access to power channels within the United States. A National Snapshot Dominicans are still considered fairly new Americans, most of the known populations are typically assumed to be concentrated in the Northeast region of the US and Florida. While this is still the case, things are changing and the Dominican population is spreading throughout the United States. This study has found that Dominicans reside in all 437 congressional districts, including Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia. Appendix 2, lists the top 100 Congressional Districts in the United States. In looking at the top 100 congressional districts new areas with a growing Dominican population were found, such as New Hampshire, Delaware, Maryland, District of Columbia, Virginia, Georgia, Illinois, Michigan, and Alaska. If misrepresentation corrections were included then potentially Ohio, North Carolina and Texas could also be added to these states with over 500 Dominicans at a congressional district level. However, through the existing data only 98 of the 437 Congressional Districts met the criterion of having a listed population of 500 or more Dominicans.

A 500-person cut off was used since it is a nice number representative of a sizeable population. This figure can also be used as a stepping-stone to determine the make up of the Dominican community throughout this country. As the community continues to grow more Dominicans will petition to become naturalized citizens, register to vote and ultimately turnout to vote. This study finds that among the “new Americans,” namely Central and South Americans, Dominicans have the highest rate of citizenship, numbered at 57 percent.63 When compared to Mexicans, Dominicans still lag behind by 10 percentage points in terms of their rate of citizenship. Yet there is hope, more striking is the fact that 79 percent of all US Dominican youth are also citizens. This young cohort is currently one-third of the US Dominican population. More specifically, one out of every three Dominicans is under the age of 18, and within this group four out of five are US citizens and will be added to the cadre of potential future voters. High Population ? High Citizenship Rational thought would suggest that a large ethnic and/or racial population presence in a CD would be highly correlated with voter potential, since a large established population can imply higher levels of citizenship. Based on the calculated data this may not necessarily be the case.

A close look was given to the top five Dominican populated congressional districts within the US and was compared to the top five districts with the highest amount of potential Dominican voters. (Table 1 shows a comparison of these two sets of data.) What is found is that while both columns are self-contained they are not directly reflective of each other with the exception of Rep. Rangel’s district (NY-15) and Rep. Menéndez’s district (NJ-13). The report also finds that districts located even within the same states can reverse their positions—in one case, one district has a higher population but a lower number of potential adult citizens eligible to vote compared to a neighboring district where the opposite is the case. This information should be used to increase the effectiveness of community-based organizations (CBOs) whose mission is to provide equal services to these areas. These CBOs facilitate the integration into the American polity, at the local level.


Table 1: A Comparison of the Top Five Dominican Congressional Districts with the Highest Population and the Highest Adult US Citizen Population
No
CD

Dominican
Population

No
CD
Dominican Adult US
CitizenPopulation
1
NY-15
123,807
1
NY-15
40,794
2
NJ-16
100.801
2
NJ-16
33,214
3
PR
56,146
3
NY-12
17,822
4
NY-12
54,087
4
PR
17,068
5
NJ-13
35,818
5
Nj-13
10,867

 

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