Early voting will be held on October 28th at Asia Times Square in Grand Prairie. Citizens vote inside the main building.
Photo credit: Christine Vo
UTA students John Lam and Vincent Ding’s politics are moving in two different directions.
Lam has taken progressive positions, focusing on infrastructure, immigration and civil rights.
But Ding supports the Republican economy in terms of increasing jobs and lowering gas prices.
Both represent more than 1.3 million Vietnamese American adults eligible to vote, according to Asian Pacific Islander data. Many lean toward the Republican Party, but experts say that post-Vietnam War sentiment doesn’t tell the whole story, and that cultural and language barriers are factors in their support. A potential change could now be taking place as younger generations reach voting age.
A Pew Research Center survey released in May found that 51% of Vietnam’s registered voters identified themselves as Republicans or Republican-leaning, while 42% identified themselves as Democrats or Democratic-leaning. Polls show that most Chinese, Indian, Filipino and Korean American voters identify as Democrats or lean Democratic.
However, an October survey by Asian Pacific Islander American Data showed that 42% of Vietnam’s registered voters are Democratic or lean Democratic, and 37% are Republican or lean Republican.
Alex Thai Ginn Vo, assistant professor at Texas Tech University’s Vietnam Center and Sam Johnson Vietnam Archives, said studies showing Vietnamese Americans’ support for the Republican Party are consistent, but different surveys give different answers. He said that it is possible to obtain.
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Vo said older Vietnamese Americans generally tend to be more interested in Vietnamese politics than American politics. They believe their votes in the United States influence policy and aim to improve freedom, development, and human rights in Vietnam.
“They know why they left Vietnam, so they are very interested in what is happening in Vietnam and the development of Vietnam,” he said.
After the fall of Saigon in 1975, the communist-led north took over the U.S.-backed south and unified Vietnam. Millions of Vietnamese who cooperated with the United States or were critical of the communist government fled the country to escape re-education camps and imprisonment. The first wave of Vietnamese immigrants had deep anti-communist ideology.
But that’s not the case with younger generations, Vo said. They consider themselves more American and are concerned about social issues such as student loan resolution, health care, and housing.
Lam, a political science graduate student, acknowledges that many Vietnamese Americans are conservative, but he doesn’t agree with Republican policies.
“Overall, I think the Democratic Party is a much better party to govern than the current Republican Party,” he said.
Vo said older Vietnamese Americans tend to take welfare policies like health care and food stamps for granted. These were already in place when they arrived in this country, so they see it as an American system rather than a Republican versus Democratic issue.
Lam’s parents are said to have supported the Democratic Party because of health care policy. The Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, helped reduce an uninsured father’s bill by more than $30,000 a decade ago when he was hospitalized.
Voting on Oct. 28 at Asia Times Square in Grand Prairie. Early voting will be held until November 1st, with election day being November 5th.
Photo credit: Christine Vo
Although Lam’s parents cannot vote as permanent green card holders, they began supporting the Democratic Party after Barack Obama’s success in the 2008 presidential election, and in 2016 they supported former President Donald Trump’s party. He said he was also listening to what was being said.
His parents left Vietnam in the early ’80s after the war, and his mother said the Republican Party has changed a lot since then.
“The current Republican Party, especially Donald Trump, has transformed, in her judgment, into a very authoritarian party in much the same vein as the communists who took over in 1975,” Lam said.
Ding’s father is a Catholic and supports the Republican Party because of his anti-abortion stance.
Ding, a junior in business analysis, supports the Republican Party for another reason.
“I think the last four years have been pretty bad considering we’re in a Democratic economy right now. So it would be nice to be able to turn things around again,” he said.
Vo said the language barrier also prevents Vietnamese Americans from listening to news programs in languages other than their own, which are usually run by older, more conservative generations.
The perception was further reinforced after the Vietnam War, he said, that Republicans took a hard line against communism and that it was Democrats who betrayed Republicans by opposing the war.
“I’m not saying they’re right or wrong, but what I’m saying is that these concepts are repeated in the media, especially the Vietnamese media that caters to that audience. ” said Vo.
In addition to the artificial intelligence-generated image of Democrats in communist garb, the party’s lack of meaningful engagement with Vietnamese Americans and its tendency to distance itself from the war have led many in the community to become Republicans. Vo said that he is firmly committed to the.
For nearly 20 years, Vietnamese Americans in North Texas have been able to tune into VVA 1600 AM for news, music, sports and more. Located in Grand Prairie’s Asian Times Square, the Vietnamese American Voice station serves an area of more than 90,000 Vietnamese residents.
The station’s general manager Lien Bich Dao and her husband Peter Dao took over the station in January. For 30 years, she worked for multiple stations in Dallas, choosing to remain neutral in news distribution, she said.
Lien Bich Dao said relying on one political affiliation means losing support for the other.
She said all news segments are sourced from trusted and reliable news sources.
“My goal is to share the news and promote it. There is no bias or guidance to follow what I want,” she said.
She said this is one of the closest elections of her career.
Vo said gender roles also play a role in how Vietnamese Americans perceive the presidential election. The culture itself tends to look down on women, which may influence how Vietnamese Americans view potential female leaders.
“It’s important to mention that many of the people who vote aren’t necessarily voting for policy, right? We tend to think they’re voting for policy. The reality is that That’s not necessarily true. I used to work in politics and I used to work in elections. People vote based on how they perceive a person through their image,” he said. .
State Rep. Hubert Vo (D-Houston) is the first and only Vietnamese American to date to be elected to the Texas House of Representatives since voters sent him to Austin 20 years ago. He now faces Vietnam-born Republican Lily Truong in a 2022 rematch. In California, Democrat Derek Tran, the son of war refugees, is running for one of the most competitive U.S. House seats.
Vo said it’s difficult to predict where Vietnamese American support will go in the coming decades. The first generation of Republicans is no longer alive. While younger generations may be more likely to support the Democratic Party, people tend to become more conservative as they get older.
“Is it fully reflective of the Vietnamese community? Probably not,” Vo said. “What I can say is that the Vietnamese American community is more diverse than that, right? It’s not just Republicans or Democrats.”
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