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Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders are the fastest-growing constituency in the United States. More than 15 million of them will be eligible to vote on November 5, many of them for the first time, so this segment of the population could make a difference, yet little is said about their needs.
"This segment of the population has grown quite a bit, representing the margin of victory," said Shekar Narasimhan, founder and president of the AAPI Victory Fund, speaking from the battleground state of Michigan. during a briefing held by Ethnic Media Services.
Narasimhan said that around 1.75 million people from the APPI community are eligible to vote and the total margin of victory of the voters in 2020 in the presidential elections in seven states was 385 thousand votes.
In 2020, she said, there was a virtual campaign and AAPI communities are among the most active on social media, but the community was not directly reached because the media is not channeled and there are low information barriers.
To present real needs, they approach people directly, speaking about migration, visa issues, public policies for the community, housing, health, and more.
"The action is important because it not only determines the future of who is in the White House, but the enthusiasm that comes from having someone whose mother was born in India, so has roots in India, in South Asia, is significant," Narasimhan concluded.
Christine Chen, CEO of APIAVote, discussed some of the key findings from a survey of the Asian American voter, commenting that as of 2020, the number of car registrants is growing at a rate of 1.28 times that of the voting-age population of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders — in other words, those over the age of 18 and U.S. citizens.
In 2020, 21 percent of Asian American voters who turned out to vote were first-time voters, which was even higher in battleground states, where, for example, in Georgia, 26 percent of the vote was from the AAPI community.
Chen said that 90 percent of this community is still thinking about voting, in 2022, 73 percent of the community decided to vote early or by mail.
"We're still seeing some shifts, but Democrats are still gaining ground among Asian American voters at 42 percent, 31 percent are independent voters and now 22 percent identify as Republican. Now when you take those who say they're independent, it actually drops to 19 percent, while 28 percent identify as Republican, the top three ethnic communities," Chen said.
Chinese, Indian and Japanese Americans are the top three ethnic communities, and 50 percent of this population has said they have never been contacted by Democrats.
Mohan Seshadri, executive director of the Asian Pacific Islander Political Alliance of Pennsylvania, said they have implemented a year-long voter outreach program, the largest in the country, that was successful in not only electing the governor and Senator Federman, but also winning the Pennsylvania House of Representatives in the process and they are going to do the Asian American voter outreach program again this year.
"We're going to knock on 500,000 doors in 22 languages, make 5 million phone calls, and send a million emails in the languages our community speaks with representation from our community leaders to meet every member of our community where they are and make sure they not only know how to vote in this critical election, but that they actually listen and fight for our communities," Seshadri added.
He also assured that they will fight for the interests of the community and that voices will be heard in all areas of government and in all parts of Pennsylvania.
Dr. Tung Nguyen, president of PIVOT, The Progressive Vietnamese American Organization, explained that the Vietnamese American voting population has been the most conservative among AAPI communities.
In 2020 and 2022, they implemented a massive bilingual online advertising campaign in English and Vietnamese to persuade voters in swing states, which incorporated young Vietnamese American activists into bilingual online digital campaign organizations.
“We recently conducted some focus groups with these voters to understand where they are coming from. What we learned was that many young Vietnamese American voters are fully behind Harris, but some are abstaining mainly because of the situation in Gaza,” Nguyen said.
He said the goal is to reach every Vietnamese American voter online or through traditional Vietnamese media with English-language ads, many times, "we need to reach them where they are, whether in person or online, in the languages they speak and reach them with correct information on the issues they care about."
Rina Shah, a Republican strategist who serves on the advisory board of the Renew Democracy Initiative, said that according to a 2024 Pew Research Center report, roughly 40 percent of Americans now consider themselves independents.
She noted that this is a community concerned about economic policies and educational equity, so she said both parties really need to engage more directly with these communities not just through targeted outreach, but also by specifically addressing their needs.
He added that in the 2020 election, many voters chose Biden for president but still supported Republican candidates for Congress.
In that regard, he noted that exit polls from that year show that approximately 9 percent of voters continue to support Republican candidates.
"At the end of the day, what I really want to leave everyone with is that if Republicans are not enthusiastic about their presidential options, but are still alive to the values of the party, they may continue to support Republican candidates for other offices," concluded Rina Shah.
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