ASIAN AMERICANS TAKING SHAPE AS POLITICAL FORCE

Members of growing group are seen as ‘classic swing voters’

When Mike Park first heard about the recent shootings in Atlanta, he felt angry and afraid. But almost immediately, he had another thought.

“We can’t just sit back,” he said. “We can’t sit in our little enclave anymore.”

Born in South Carolina to Korean immigrants, Park grew up wanting to escape his Asian identity. He resented having to be the one student to speak at AsianPacific day and felt embarrassed when his friends did not want to eat dinner at his house because of the unfamiliar pickled radishes and cabbage in his refrigerator.

Now 42, Park embraces both his Korean heritage and an Asian American identity he shares with others of his generation. The Atlanta shootings that left eight dead, six of them women of Asian descent, made him feel an even stronger sense of solidarity, especially after a surge in bias incidents against Asians nationwide.

“I do think this horrible crime has brought people together,” said Park, who works as an insurance agent in Duluth, Ga., an Atlanta suburb that is one-quarter Asian. “It really is an awakening.”

For years, Asian Americans were among the least likely of any racial or ethnic group to vote or to join community or advocacy groups. Today they are surging into public life, running for office in record numbers and turning out to vote unlike ever before. They are now the fastest-growing group in the U.S. electorate.

But as a political force, Asian Americans are still taking shape. With a relatively short history of voting, they differ from demographic groups whose families have built party loyalties and voting tendencies over generations. Most of their families arrived after 1965, when the United States opened its doors more widely to people in Asia. There are vast class divisions, too; the income gap between the rich and the poor is greatest among Asian Americans.

“These are your classic swing voters,” said Karthick Ramakrishnan, director of AAPI Data. “These immigrants did not grow up in a Democratic household or Republican household. You have a lot more persuadability.”

Historical data on Asian American voting patterns is spotty. Analyses of exit polls show that a majority voted for George H.W. Bush in 1992, Ramakrishnan said. Today, a majority of Asians vote for Democrats, but that masks deep differences by subgroup. Vietnamese Americans, for example, lean more toward Republicans, and Indian Americans lean toward Democrats.

It is too early for final breakdowns of the Asian American vote in 2020, along either party or ethnic lines. But one thing seems clear: Turnout for Asian Americans appears to have been higher than it has ever been. Ramakrishnan analyzed preliminary estimates from the voter data firm Catalist that were based on available returns from 33 states representing two-third of eligible Asian American voters. The estimates found that adult Asian American citizens had the highest recorded increase in voter turnout among any racial or ethnic group.

Part of the new energy in Asian American politics comes from second-generation immigrants, who are now in their 30s and 40s and are forming families that are far more racially mixed and civically engaged than those of their parents.

More Asian Americans are running for office than ever before. They include Andrew Yang, among the early leaders in the race for New York mayor, and Michelle Wu, the city councilor who is running for mayor of Boston. A Filipino American, Robert Bonta, just became attorney general of California.

At least 158 Asian Americans ran for state legislatures in 2020, according to AAPI Data, up by 15 percent from 2018.