The Key to A Blue Wave in 2020? Mobilizing AAPI Voters.
As we approach this November’s general election, campaigns across the country are mobilizing volunteers and resources to gear up for the final 30 day stretch. With that milestone comes increased efforts to reach voters, sparking questions of how to most effectively reach the electorate along lines of race, gender, partisanship, and age. And in today’s hectic political atmosphere, a new, powerful voting bloc is emerging.
Asian American Pacific Islanders (AAPIs) are the fastest growing ethnic group in the US, increasing at four times the rate of the white population. Historically, AAPIs have voted at low rates, though civic engagement among AAPIs is increasing. While voter turnout increased from 28% among Asian Americans in 2014 to 42% in 2018, and from 33% to 44% among Pacific Islanders, AAPI still voted at lower rates than their Black and white peers.
However, despite the relatively small size of the AAPI community compared to minority groups such as Black or Latinx Americans, finding ways to increase turnout among AAPIs just may be the key to electing Democrats up and down the ballot in November.
In battleground states, the burgeoning AAPI vote has the potential to help deliver key Democratic victories. Michigan, a state whose electorate is 3.8% AAPI, flipped red on a razor’s edge and was delivered to Trump in 2016 by a scant 0.23% margin. Pennsylvania’s electorate, which voted red on a 0.72% margin, is 4% AAPI. Even in swing states that voted red by a wider margin, the AAPI vote could be a deciding factor this November — for example, in 2016, Trump won North Carolina by a 3.67% margin, and AAPI voters make up 3.5% of the NC electorate.
And it’s worked before. In California’s 2018 midterm elections, the AAPI electorate turned out to the polls in historic numbers, and Californian Republicans lost 7 House seats — many in districts where AAPIs make up a large percentage of the population.
Despite the increasing statistical importance of the AAPI vote, campaign outreach to AAPI communities remains low. According to a 2018 survey conducted by AAPI Data and APIA Vote, 50 percent of AAPI voters had received no outreach or weren’t sure if they had from the Democratic Party, while 60 percent said the same about Republicans.
One of the biggest reasons for this lack of outreach? The AAPI community has historically been left out of political conversations. Whether because of language barriers, or of a misconstrued, outdated perception of the “irrelevance” of the AAPI vote, candidates and activist organizations have failed to mobilize the AAPI community for decades, creating a disconnect that fuels a self-enforcing cycle of misconceptions about AAPI political engagement. Rarely do candidates, especially those with a national stage, direct significant outreach attempts to the AAPI community or speak about attempts to “win the AAPI vote,” leading to an increased lack of civic engagement from AAPI communities who don’t feel heard by candidates; cyclically, low AAPI voter turnout leads to a continued lack of targeted political messaging.
Another failure in candidates’ messaging to AAPI communities is their treatment of AAPIs as a monolithic group. Comprising more than 20 different ethnic groups, the incredible diversity under the umbrella of “Asian American Pacific Islander” has a great impact on socioeconomic status, educational attainment, English proficiency, partisan leaning, and thus, the efficacy of certain types of messaging and rhetoric.
In addition to ethnic diversity, AAPIs fall along many dividing lines of immigration status, citizenship, and English proficiency. Since 2008, Asian nationals have comprised the largest group of incoming immigrants on a yearly basis, having since exceeded the percentage of annual immigrants from South and Central America. Due in part to the size of the foreign born AAPI population, a huge portion of AAPIs — one third — are limited English proficient. Even though this has long been one rationale for lack of political outreach to the AAPI community, the percentage of AAPI immigrants becoming naturalized citizens is increasing rapidly, and the perception that many AAPIs aren’t eligible voters is proving false.
However, the most vital piece of the puzzle is AAPIs’ comparative lack of strong partisanship. A 2020 survey found that a third of AAPIs do not think along the lines of the party system. Not only does this remarkable characteristic prove that many AAPIs continue to be open to persuasion, increasing the urgent need for Democrats to communicate with AAPI voters, it proves that AAPI-targeted political messaging should focus on issues, not political parties.
Luckily for Democrats, the majority of the AAPI community tends to align with liberal ideas on issues such as healthcare, immigration reform, and gun reform. (It’s important to note that while this is true generally speaking, deeper analysis of AAPI issues should always be based on disaggregated data that reveals discrepancies on policy priorities between ethnic groups.) However, taking this liberal inclination for granted is not enough, and every single Democratic candidate should be directing grassroots outreach efforts towards AAPIs.
Campaigns and activist organizations need to utilize a variety of tactics to meet members of the AAPI community where they’re at — conducting outreach and publishing resources in a variety of languages, communicating with ethnic media sources, discussing issues that matter to the AAPI community, hosting events with AAPI community leaders, and more.
AAPI communities are growing at a rate that makes us of incredible political significance in battleground states, and since half of AAPIs aren’t committed to either party, we are perfectly positioned to help flip key seats and districts blue this November — if Democrats can mobilize the AAPI vote for the first time in American history.
For years, AAPI voter turnout has been low. 2020 could be the year that changes, and Asian American Pacific Islander voters fuel a blue wave, up and down the ballot.
The Young Politicasian is a project of the High School Democrats of America Asian American Pacific Islander Caucus. Follow us on Instagram @hsda_aapi, join the caucus, and apply to be a staff writer. The opinions expressed in The Young Politicasian do not necessarily reflect those of the AAPI Caucus or the High School Democrats of America.
