865,000 North Carolinians—nearly 9% of the total population—identified themselves as “Irish” on ancestry questions in the 2012 American Community Survey (ACS). (An additional quarter million identified themselves as Scotch-Irish, but this ethnic origin is considered distinct from Irish.) Among individuals specifying an ancestry or ethnic origin, Irish is the 5th most common in North Carolina after African-American, American, German, and English. The map below shows concentrations of individuals of Irish ancestry across the state by…

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