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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)