2024-09-24 04:30
4:30
September 24, 2024
morning
Your trusted source for putting abortion and 2024 election news in context. Sign up for our daily newsletter.
With Vice President Kamala Harris as the presidential candidate, more Asian American voters plan to support the top Democratic presidential candidate, according to the 2024 Asian American Voter Survey released Tuesday.
Harris’ campaign has made special appeal to Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) voters, leading her to a 38-point lead among Asian Americans over former Republican President Donald Trump, a much larger lead than the 15-point lead she had with Asian American voters in a spring poll before President Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race and Harris became the Democratic standard-bearer.
In May, Biden led Trump 46% to 31%, with 23% undecided or backing a third-party candidate. Currently, 66% of Asian American voters support Harris, compared with 28% for Trump and just 6% for a third party.
According to Karthick Ramakrishnan, executive director and founder of AAPI Data, one of the groups that conducted the survey, this marks a return to support for the Democratic candidate at levels seen in 2020. “In terms of voter enthusiasm and intent to vote, we’re on par with 2020, which was a historic election with record-high Asian American turnout. All of these factors suggest that Asian Americans are playing a sizeable role in Harris’ candidacy.”
Harris’ approval rating has also increased by 18 points, from 44% in the spring to 62% now.
For Asian American voters, Harris’ gender (38%) is more important than her Asian American identity (27%), which is notable given that Harris’ mother was an immigrant from India.
This is all the more surprising given the role race has played in the campaign, especially since Trump has tried to center Harris’ race by asking whether she is black or South Asian (she is both). “Gender hasn’t been as explicitly talked about in the Trump campaign; it’s been much more about[Harris’]racial identity, so while this hasn’t gotten as much attention compared to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, I think it’s emerged as a pretty powerful force,” Ramakrishnan said.
Christine Chen, co-founder and executive director of APIAVote, added that Asian American voters’ attitudes about Harris’ gender mirror much of the grassroots activism taking place on her behalf: “South Asians supporting Harris, Chinese Americans supporting Harris, Korean Americans supporting Harris. We’ve seen that activism coming out of the community, and I think that’s partly because of her ethnicity, but it’s also been driven by women in that community.”
Asian American women are more likely to support Harris (70%), while men are more likely to support her (57%). Chen said a lot of the activism and momentum also has to do with Asian American women working together with Black and Latino women in organizing to build a racially diverse coalition of voters.
And these women have been organizing for 10 years now, Ramakrishnan said.
“So when you combine that with the historic nature of her candidacy as not only the first Asian American, but the first woman and the first Asian American woman, I think it makes for a pretty powerful combination,” he said.
The AAPI Voter Survey is a collaboration between AAPI Data and APIAVote and was conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago from September 3 to 9. The survey was conducted in English, Chinese dialects Mandarin and Cantonese, Vietnamese and Korean and oversampled citizens and registered voters. The margin of error is 4.7 percentage points.
See more coverage from the 19th
Detailed reports on topics of interest
The Harris campaign has made efforts to reach out to the Asian American community, and it appears to be working: 62% of respondents said they had been contacted by Democrats, compared with 46% who said they had been contacted by Republicans.
The Harris campaign released a third ad last week, targeted specifically at Asian American voters, called “My Mom.” It recycled part of Harris’ acceptance speech at last month’s Democratic National Convention, in which she described her mother as a “5-foot-tall, intelligent, brown woman with an accent” who taught her family to “do something about injustice, not complain about it.”
Meanwhile, when APIAVote held a presidential town hall meeting earlier this summer, the Republican Party didn’t even send a representative, Chen said.
Ramakrishnan said the top issue for many Asian American voters is “racism and discrimination,” with 72% of Asian American voters saying they would not want to vote for a candidate who did not share their views on racism and discrimination.
Since first running for president in 2015, Trump has demonized immigrants and repeatedly referred to COVID-19 as the “Chinese virus,” which has led to an uptick in discrimination and attacks against Asian Americans. Recently, Trump’s running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, promoted a racist conspiracy theory about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, that he knew was false.
“Even if Republicans are doing a great job of reaching out to voters, as long as party leaders continue to make statements that are perceived as xenophobic and racist, they’re going to have a very hard time winning over Asian American voters,” Ramakrishnan said. “That’s very real. Of course the parties need to step up, but what party leaders say matters.”
“I don’t want to ignore the role of racism and discrimination,” Ramakrishnan continued, “and seeing Trump and Vance not just dog whistle on racial issues but trumpeting race on bullhorns will deter Republicans from exploiting the discontent people have not only with Biden but with Harris.”
The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment about its outreach to Asian American voters.
Another KFF poll released Tuesday found that 45% of Asian immigrants say Trump’s rhetoric about immigrants has had a negative impact on how they are treated. Only 7% said the same about Harris. In fact, 30% of Asian immigrants say Harris’ rhetoric has had a positive impact on how they are treated.
Chen pointed to Georgia as a state where Asian American voters, especially newly registered voters, can make a difference: Biden won the state by just 12,000 votes in the 2020 presidential election, with about 39,000 newly registered Asian American voters, Chen said.
Ramakrishnan said abortion is the second-biggest issue for Asian American voters and that Harris has made it a centerpiece of her candidacy.
“Asian Americans are some of the strongest supporters of abortion rights in this country,” Ramakrishnan said. “Even among Asian Americans who are predominantly Catholic, like Filipinos, support for abortion rights is high. I don’t think there’s much recognition of how deeply abortion influences public opinion among Asian American voters.”
Among Asian American voters surveyed, 63% said they would not vote for a candidate who did not share their views on abortion policy, a 20-point difference between men and women on that question, with 72% of Asian American women and 52% of Asian American men saying the same thing.
While there are six weeks until Election Day, candidates would be wise to understand that Asian American voters have an even shorter window to cast their ballot, Chen said: In the 2022 midterm elections, 73% voted early or by mail.
To check your voter registration status or get more information about registering to vote, text “19thnews” to 26797.
