29 October 2008
Asian Americans Important Voter Group in Election Swing States
Analysts say large percentage of Asian-American voters remain undecided
Washington — A sizable percentage of Asian-American voters remain uncommitted to either U.S. presidential candidate and could play a pivotal role in the 2008 election, according to political analysts.
A multilingual survey of more than 4,000 Asian Americans conducted between August 18 and September 26 found more than one-third of those who planned to vote November 4 had not decided on a candidate.
The National Asian American Survey (NAAS), a joint project of Rutgers University in New Jersey, the University of California at Berkeley, the University of California at Riverside and the University of Southern California, also highlighted political trends among specific ethnic groups.
The survey indicated that among those who had decided on a candidate, two-thirds of Vietnamese Americans supported Republican John McCain; Japanese Americans, Chinese Americans and Indian Americans favored Democrat Barack Obama by more than a 3-to-1 ratio; and Korean and Filipino Americans who are likely voters also supported Obama over McCain, but by a much smaller ratio.
Many of these differences are due to party affiliation, researchers say; Vietnamese Americans, for example, tend to identify with the Republican Party, while Indian Americans and Japanese Americans favor the Democratic Party. Chinese Americans are the group least likely to identify with a major political party.
But political affiliations within the Asian-American community are not clear-cut. At least 25 ethnically organized groups on the social-networking Web site Facebook express support for one of the candidates, including three Indian-American groups for McCain and one Vietnamese-American group for Obama.
Referring to the National Asian American Survey, political analyst Rhodes Cook of the Wall Street Journal writes that “the diversity of Asian Americans makes them difficult, if not impossible, to reach as a voting bloc.”
Although each party “has its beachhead in the Asian-American community ... there are significant numbers of Asian Americans of all ethnicities that are open to partisan persuasion,” he wrote in an October 16 blog entry.
Asian Americans are currently the third-largest minority group in the United States, the Census Bureau says. Asian Americans are also the second-fastest-growing minority group, with a projected population increase of 213 percent between 2000 and 2050. By 2050, the U.S. Census Bureau estimates, 33.4 million Americans will claim Asian heritage, comprising 8 percent of the total U.S. population.
As the overall Asian-American population grows, so does its potential political impact.
“While many of them reside in California and Hawaii, their numbers are growing in the major population centers of contested states such as Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, Virginia and Washington,” Cook wrote.
According to the NAAS, Asian-American voters comprised significant percentages in these states in the 2004 presidential election:
• In Minnesota, 59,000 Asian Americans cast ballots, making up 2 percent of the state’s total votes.
• In Nevada, 32,000 Asian Americans voted, making up about 3.7 percent of the state's total.
• In Pennsylvania, 43,000 Asian Americans voted, constituting nearly 1 percent of the state’s voters.
• In Virginia, 45,000 Asian Americans voted, making up about 1.4 percent of the state’s voters.
• In Washington state, 169,000 Asian Americans cast ballots, making up about 5.9 percent of the state's votes.
Asian Americans also have the potential to affect other political races. In the 2006 midterm elections, for example, Democrat Senator Jim Webb of Virginia challenged and defeated Republican incumbent Senator George Allen by 9,329 votes, thus giving the Democratic Party a majority in the Senate. According to the Census Bureau, Virginia had more than 360,000 residents of Asian ancestry in 2006.
The text of the National Asian American Survey is available on a Web site maintained by S. Karthick Ramakrishnan of the University of California at Riverside.
See also “Presidential Campaigns Reach Out to Asian Americans.”
