How Many Americans Have a Passport?

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One of the things I’ve often heard while living in the European Union is the meme that only 10% of Americans own a passport.  This assertion is usually followed by the quazi-urban legend that George W. Bush never had a passport before becoming president.  This I’ve never been able to prove or disprove any satisfaction Which, it turns out, is not true.

Such a low number wouldn’t have surprised me. After all, the United States is nearly thrice the size of the EU and borders only two foreigncountries, while the EU is made of 27 countries and -- depending on how you want to count them -- borders another 19.

I wondered aloud about this in my previous post, ‘Work in Progress: The United States Explained’ and a commenter, Alison, was nice enough to bring this data set about passports from the ever-awesome data.gov to my attention.

The data was only for the past four years, so I had to do some estimates based on issue rates and the 2000 census numbers, but the result is the above infographic and the table below:

State

Population with Passport

NEW JERSEY

68.36%

ALASKA

65.01%

MASSACHUSETTS

63.42%

NEW YORK

62.47%

CALIFORNIA

60.19%

NEW HAMPSHIRE

59.39%

CONNECTICUT

58.50%

WASHINGTON

57.28%

VERMONT

56.32%

MARYLAND

56.21%

MINNESOTA

56.14%

COLORADO

54.88%

RHODE ISLAND

54.40%

FLORIDA

52.83%

ILLINOIS

52.06%

MAINE

51.62%

ARIZONA

51.24%

HAWAII

49.94%

UTAH

49.36%

VIRGINIA

49.16%

TEXAS

48.80%

NORTH DAKOTA

48.30%

NEVADA

46.84%

MONTANA

46.63%

PENNSYLVANIA

45.11%

DELAWARE

44.93%

WISCONSIN

43.70%

OREGON

43.39%

MICHIGAN

42.89%

WYOMING

41.40%

IDAHO

41.24%

IOWA

39.34%

NEBRASKA

38.97%

GEORGIA

38.73%

KANSAS

38.18%

SOUTH DAKOTA

37.69%

NEW MEXICO

37.11%

OHIO

35.71%

MISSOURI

35.32%

NORTH CAROLINA

34.18%

OKLAHOMA

33.23%

INDIANA

32.73%

SOUTH CAROLINA

32.09%

LOUISIANA

29.47%

TENNESSEE

28.78%

ARKANSAS

25.14%

ALABAMA

25.03%

KENTUCKY

24.94%

WEST VIRGINIA

20.43%

MISSISSIPPI

19.86%

(If you’re the kind of person who really cares about the details, you can see all the calculations on my United States data spreadsheet please let me know if there are any errors)

The United Kingdom Venn Diagram

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*PLEASE NOTE: THIS PROJECT IS ON HOLD UNTIL AFTER THE SCOTTISH REFERENDUM ON INDEPENDENCE*

After many requests, I've made a poster version of my 'The Difference Between the United Kingdom, Great Britain and England Presentation'. You can buy a copy for your wall from cafepress.

Please let me know if there are any errors you spot, as this will be the basis for the updated version of the video.

Questions I could use answers to:

• Two citizens of the Republic of Ireland move to Northern Ireland and have a child. Is that child entitled to British Citizenship at the point of its birth? *Yes, that child is automatically a British Citizen, See British Nationality Law * - Two British (English) citizens move to Northern Ireland and have a child. Is that child entitled to Irish (Republic of) citizenship? Yes, that child can /optionally/ become a (Republic of) Irish citizen.
• Would it be fair to say that people in Northern Ireland who identify as ‘Irish’ generally want union with Ireland, those who identify as ‘British’ like the status quo and that ‘Northern Irish’ is a more neutral term? Seems so.
• Why are Mozambique and Rwanda part of the Commonwealth of Nations?

List of official changes to v2.0:

• The Republic of Ireland is not the official name for Ireland
• Northern Ireland will be yellow, not orange
• England will be shown in white, Wales in red
• The United Kingdom is a part of the Commonwealth Realm
• My terrible, terrible pronunciation of the Orkney Islands
• The Church of England is just the church of England, not of the UK
• The Commonwealth Realm is made of the Commonwealth Realms
• The correct order of population for the British Overseas Territories is: Bermuda, Cayman Islands, Turks and Caicos Islands, Gibraltar, British Virgin Islands, Anguilla, Akrotiri and Dhekelia, St Helena Ascension and Tristan da Cunha, Montserrat, British Indian Ocean Territory, Falkland Islands, British Antarctic Territory, Pitcairn Islands and the South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands
• Remove the word 'sovereign' in reference to the constituent countries

Possible things to include:

• The Commonwealth of Nations
• The European Union (briefly)
• Other parts of the former British Empire: Ireland, United States, Hong Kong, Fiji (suspended), Zimbabwe (suspended), Burma, Egypt, Sudan, Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Kuwait, Namibia, Bahrain, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Oman, Singapore, Ionian Islands (Any others?)
• Hawaii as a former colony
• Some acknowledgement of the controversy surrounding the term 'British Isles'
• People in Northern Ireland are British Citizens, but can choose to be dual-citizens with Ireland
• Sark
• Cornwall
• Isles of Scilly
• The complexity of Northern Irish identity (British, Irish or Northern Irish)
• Rockall
• The derivation of the Union Flag from the St. George, St. Andrew & St. Patrick's flags
• England, Scotland and Northern Ireland have different banknotes.

Things people think are true, but aren't:

• Wales is not a principality
• The City of London is not an independent nation states that secretly controls the world

Things I'm acknowledging here, but probably won't mention:

• Every single island in Jersey and Guernsey
• Sealand

Things I know but am choosing to ignore:

• The multiplicity of The Crown – there lies some serious semantic insanity
• The difference between a venn diagram and a euler diagram
• Some people are offended by the background song 'Rule, Britannia!' – it's historically appropriate, in the public domain and I'm not changing it.

United States Population Growth from 2000 to 2010

As an abstract politics geek, I was excited to find that the official growth data is out from the 2010 census. Â As expected, the South and the West are doing well, but it’s bad news for the Northeast. Â The exact growth percentages are as follows:

State	Population as of 2000 Census	Population as of 2010 Census[38]	Percent change
California	33,871,648	37,253,956	10.0%
Texas	20,851,820	25,145,561	20.6%
New York	18,976,457	19,378,102	2.1%
Florida	15,982,378	18,801,310	16.6%
Illinois	12,419,293	12,830,632	3.3%
Pennsylvania	12,281,054	12,702,379	3.4%
Ohio	11,353,140	11,536,504	1.6%
Michigan	9,938,444	9,883,640	–0.6%
Georgia	8,186,453	9,687,653	18.3%
North Carolina	8,049,313	9,535,483	18.5%
New Jersey	8,414,350	8,791,894	4.5%
Virginia	7,078,515	8,001,024	13.0%
Washington	5,894,121	6,724,540	14.1%
Massachusetts	6,349,097	6,547,629	3.1%
Indiana	6,080,485	6,483,802	6.6%
Arizona	5,130,632	6,392,017	24.6%
Tennessee	5,689,283	6,346,105	11.5%
Missouri	5,595,211	5,988,927	7.0%
Maryland	5,296,486	5,773,552	9.0%
Wisconsin	5,363,675	5,686,986	6.0%
Minnesota	4,919,479	5,303,925	7.8%
Colorado	4,301,261	5,029,196	16.9%
Alabama	4,447,100	4,779,736	7.5%
South Carolina	4,012,012	4,625,364	15.3%
Louisiana	4,468,976	4,533,372	1.4%
Kentucky	4,041,769	4,339,367	7.4%
Oregon	3,421,399	3,831,074	12.0%
Oklahoma	3,450,654	3,751,351	8.7%
Connecticut	3,405,565	3,702,379	3.4%
Iowa	2,926,324	3,046,355	4.1%
Mississippi	2,844,658	2,967,297	4.3%
Arkansas	2,673,400	2,915,918	9.1%
Kansas	2,688,418	2,853,118	6.1%
Utah	2,233,169	2,763,885	23.8%
Nevada	1,998,257	2,700,551	35.1%
New Mexico	1,819,046	2,059,179	13.2%
West Virginia	1,808,344	1,852,994	2.5%
Nebraska	1,711,263	1,826,341	6.7%
Idaho	1,293,953	1,567,582	21.1%
Hawaii	1,211,537	1,360,301	12.3%
Maine	1,274,923	1,328,361	4.2%
New Hampshire	1,235,786	1,316,470	6.5%
Rhode Island	1,048,319	1,052,567	0.4%
Montana	902,195	989,415	9.7%
Delaware	783,600	897,934	14.6%
South Dakota	754,844	814,180	7.9%
Alaska	626,932	710,231	13.3%
North Dakota	642,200	672,591	4.7%
Vermont	608,827	625,741	2.8%
District of Columbia	572,059	601,723	5.2%
Wyoming	493,782	563,626	14.1%
United States	281,421,906	308,745,538	9.7%

Thanks to the U.S. Census Bureau for the data, Wikimedia Commons for the blank United States map and skyblue2u for the color palette.  The calculations are on my United States Data spreadsheet.