Meghan Markle and Prince Harry welcomed a baby boy into the world on Monday, and a royal announcement shared that the family was “delighted with the news.” The Duchess of Sussex, an American citizen, married into the British royal family last year. While the family hasn’t announced any decisions about the baby’s citizenship — or name, for that matter — it has been a hot topic of conversation on both sides of the pond.
A recent College Pulse poll, conducted among 6,435 students currently attending four-year colleges or universities across the United States, asked if Meghan and Harry’s baby should have U.S. citizenship. Students had the option to answer “the baby should have U.S. citizenship,” “the baby should not have U.S. citizenship,” or “not sure.” Overall, students are torn: 31 percent say the baby should be a U.S. citizen, and 30 percent say he shouldn’t. 40 percent aren’t sure.
Breaking down the data tells a different story. The College Pulse team used College Pulse Insights — the company’s predictive intelligence and statistical analysis platform — to correlate this survey’s questions with the more than 15,000 variables in its database. It uncovered other interesting relationships, including a strong correlation between students who support President Trump and students who think the baby should not have citizenship.
The State Department’s guidelines say that a child born abroad to an American citizen “may acquire U.S. citizenship at birth if certain statutory requirements are met.” Essentially, the parents have to contact the U.S. Embassy and request that their child be granted U.S. citizenship, so whether Meghan and Harry seek dual citizenship for their son is up to them.
The royal family told CNN in 2017 that Meghan would become a U.K. citizen after the wedding. The process will probably take years, even for a duchess, but it’s unclear if she plans to have dual citizenship.
Because his mother is still an American citizen, the royal baby would have an easier time getting U.S. citizenship than Meghan will becoming a U.K. citizen. But as seventh in line to the British throne, the royal family may object.
A lot about the baby’s future is still unknown, and U.S. college students are also up in the air on whether he should be a dual citizen.
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Methodology: This poll was designed and conducted by College Pulse. Interviews were conducted among a sample of 6,435 full-time and part-time students attending four-year colleges or universities in the U.S. who are part of College Pulse’s American College Student Panel. To reduce the effects of any non-response bias, a post-stratification adjustment was applied based on demographic distributions from the 2017 Current Population Survey (CPS). The post-stratification weight rebalanced the sample based on the following benchmarks: age, race and ethnicity, and gender. The sample weighting was accomplished using an iterative proportional fitting (IFP) process that simultaneously balances the distributions of all variables. Weights were trimmed to prevent individual interviews from having too much influence on the final results.
About College Pulse: College Pulse is a leading online survey and analytics company dedicated to understanding the attitudes, preferences, and behaviors of today’s college students. College Pulse offers custom data-driven marketing and research solutions, utilizing its unique American College Student Panel and online analytics platform which provides insight to brands, companies, and organizations. College Pulse’s platform includes 240,000 undergraduate college student respondents from more than 800 four-year colleges and universities in all 50 states. To learn more about College Pulse, please contact Jake@collegepulse.com.
