Exit polls were wrong about how many Asian Americans supported Trump
A striking majority of Asian-American voters backed Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump, according to a national poll.
The Asian-American National Election Eve Poll concluded that 75% of Asian Americans voted for Clinton, while only 19% voted for Donald Trump—a much wider margin than found by exit polls, which reported 65% of Asian Americans voting for Clinton.
“Once again, the national media exit-poll numbers for Latinos and Asian Americans didn’t do it right and didn’t get it right,” Taeku Lee, UC Berkeley political science professor and the survey’s lead researcher, said in a release.
[…]
In key swing states, Asian Americans boosted votes for Clinton, with 83% supporting her in Pennsylvania, 78% in Virginia, 73% in North Carolina, and 72% in Florida. Even among Asian-American conservatives, “they tend to support Obamacare, or the Affordable Care Act, more than Republicans in general,” Karin Wang, vice president of programs and communications at AAAJ-LA, told me.“I think we are seeing Asian Americans generally lining up—especially as time passes—with other communities of color, in ways that counter the narrative that Asian Americans are still mostly conservative.”
Hey I’m not Filipino (I’m Japanese-American) but I’d like to respond to a reblog with these tags because they raise a really important point:
#this one actually says filipinos voted overwhelmingly for clinton and i wanna know what y’all think about that#all i’ve been seeing is that we voted for trump#us politics
The white supremacist narrative will continue to enforce this totally false idea in the absence of all facts, both in the alt right and mainstream media. Asian-Americans are supposed to be the model minority, the “good” ones, the “smart” ones… as long as we stay very, very quiet and never disagree with a single thing white people say about us or about other PoC, especially black people.
But we do speak up. And we’ll keep on speaking up. Of course we didn’t vote for Trump. Asians are just as terrified as other PoC and we know that for as much as the non-Muslim Asian face isn’t the contemporary central focus of hate, we’re the next target down the list, especially once anti-Chinese and anti-North Korean sentiment explodes, and we can hear the rumbling now.
We’ll keep speaking up and the white supremacist noise machine will keep drowning us out but we have to keep on doing it anyway.
YES, to all of this. (Of course we’re terrified. among other things, South Asians belong to the multi-ethnic “You Look Like A Terrorist” category of people who get randomly strip-searched at airports. we’re not all Muslim but the majority of us know that won’t protect us.)
I’m trying not to copy/paste the whole article but I think everyone should see all of it:
Among Asian-American voters, women supported Clinton more than men, while Indian Americans supported her more than other Asian ethnic groups. Chief among concerns for Asian-American women are immigrant reform, reproductive justice, and economic measures to fight poverty, such as raising minimum wage and providing paid sick leave, said Miriam Yeung, executive director of advocacy group National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum.
“There are well over 1 million Asian-American women living in poverty in the Midwest,” she said, “and over a third of Asian-American workers make less than $13 an hour.” Meanwhile, millennials and native-born Asian Americans tend to lead the charge on many progressive issues—such as supporting measures to address climate change, equal rights for black people, and increased federal assistance for college—according to national research group AAPI Data.
For South Asian American voters, education policy and immigration reform are particularly important issues, according to Suman Raghunathan, executive director of South Asian Americans Leading Together, a nonpartisan South Asian American advocacy nonprofit. “Indian Americans alone are one of the most rapidly growing undocumented populations nationwide,” she said.
[…] Politicians showed signs of recognizing the growing influence of Asian-American voters this cycle, according to Alton Wang, an associate at civic-engagement organization APIAVote. Clinton’s campaign aired TV and radio ads in Mandarin, Korean, Vietnamese, and Cantonese, targeting Asian-American voters in California. She also published an op-ed that specifically pledged to stand with AAPIs—an unprecedented move for a major-party presidential nominee.
[…] In larger strokes, however, the AAPI community remains underappreciated. Despite how quickly it’s growing, “seldom have our members been taken seriously in the political process,” said AAAJ-LA’s Ichinose. The Asian American National Election Eve poll found that 57% of Asian Americans were not asked by any campaign, political party, or civic organizations to vote or register to vote. Of those contacted, 84% were asked in English. Two-thirds of Asian Americans are foreign-born, and many are first-time voters with limited English ability. They’re often asked for more identification, are segregated from other voters, or aren’t given proper language assistance. Asian Americans may also face voter intimidation, particularly those perceived as Muslim.
