Sep 24, 2024 Jennifer Gerson, Jasmine Mithani

Originally published by The 19th

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More Asian-American voters are planning to support the Democrat at the top of the presidential ticket now that Vice President Kamala Harris is the nominee, according to the 2024 AAPI Voter Survey released Tuesday.

Harris, whose campaign has been specifically reaching out to Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) voters, has a 38-point lead over Republican former President Donald Trump among Asian Americans. It’s a significantly wider advantage than the 15-point lead President Joe Biden had with Asian-American voters in a spring survey, before Biden dropped out of the presidential race and Harris became the Democrats’ standard-bearer. 

In May, Biden led Trump 46 percent to 31 percent, with 23 percent undecided or backing a third-party candidate. Now, 66 percent of Asian-American voters back Harris, compared with 28 percent for Trump and just 6 percent for a third party. 

It’s a return to 2020 levels of support for the Democratic ticket, according to Karthick Ramakrishnan, the executive director and founder of AAPI Data, one of the groups that conducted the survey. “When it comes to voter enthusiasm and intention to vote, we’re seeing levels on par with 2020, which was a historic election in terms of having record high turnout for Asian Americans. All these ingredients point toward Asian Americans having a pretty powerful role in the Harris candidacy.”

Harris’ favorability has also risen 18 points; it is 62 percent now versus 44 percent in the spring.

For Asian-American voters, Harris’ gender is more important (38 percent) than her Asian-American identity (27 percent). It’s noteworthy given that Harris’ mother was an immigrant from India. 

It’s all the more surprising given the role that race has come to play in the campaign, especially since Trump has sought to center Harris’ race by questioning whether she is Black or South Asian. (She is both.) “Gender is not explicitly talked about as much in this campaign by Trump — it’s [Harris’] racial identity that’s being talked about a lot more. So I think it’s one of those things that seems under the radar compared to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 candidacy, but is emerging as a pretty powerful force,” Ramakrishnan said.

Christine Chen, a co-founder and executive director of APIAVote, added that AAPI voters’ attitudes on Harris’ gender reflect much of the grassroots organizing happening on her behalf. “South Asians for Harris, Chinese Americans for Harris, Korean Americans for Harris — we saw such activation coming from the community and partially, I think it is because of her ethnicity, but it was also driven by the women in those communities.” 

AAPI women are more likely to support Harris (70 percent) than AAPI men (57 percent). Chen said much of this work, and excitement, also has to do with how Asian-American women are working with Black women and Latinas across organizing spaces, bringing together a racially diverse coalition of voters. 

And these women have been organizing for a decade already, Ramakrishnan said. 

“So you combine that with having the historic nature of her candidacy as not only the first Asian American but as the first woman and Asian-American woman, and that combines, I think, into a pretty potent combination,” he said.

The AAPI Voter Survey is a joint effort between AAPI Data and APIAVote, and was administered Sept. 3-9 by NORC at the University of Chicago. The survey was offered in English, Chinese dialects of Mandarin and Cantonese, Vietnamese and Korean, and oversampled citizens and registered voters. The margin of error is 4.7 percentage points. 

The Harris campaign has been working to reach AAPI communities, and it appears to be paying off: 62 percent say they have been contacted by the Democratic Party, compared with 46 percent who have had the Republican Party reach out. 

Last week, the Harris campaign released its third ad specifically targeting Asian-American voters, titled “My Mother.” It repurposes part of Harris’ acceptance speech from last month’s Democratic National Convention when she described her mom — “a brilliant 5-foot-tall Brown woman with an accent” — and said her mother taught her family “to never complain about injustice but do something about it.” 

Meanwhile, when APIAVote had a presidential town hall earlier this summer, Republicans didn’t even send a surrogate, Chen said. 

For many AAPI voters, Ramakrishnan said, the top issue is “racism and discrimination.” Seventy-two percent of AAPI voters said they wouldn’t be willing to vote for a candidate who doesn’t share their views on racism or discrimination. 

Since first entering presidential politics in 2015, Trump has demonized immigrants. He also repeatedly referred to COVID-19 as the “China virus,” which was followed by a rise in discrimination and attacks against Asian Americans. Recently, Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, has amplified racist conspiracy theories about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, that he knows are false.

“Even if the Republican Party is investing in voter outreach, to the extent that party leaders continue to engage in talk that is perceived as xenophobic or racist, it’ll make it really difficult to win support among Asian-American voters,” Ramakrishnan said. “That’s just very real. Absolutely, the parties need to invest, but what party leaders say also matters.”

“I don’t want to ignore the role of racism and discrimination,” Ramakrishnan continued. “So the extent that you see both Trump and Vance not only dog whistling on race, but blowing their bullhorns on race, that’s something that will prevent the Republican Party from capitalizing on any frustration people have with not only Biden, but Harris.”

The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment on outreach to AAPI voters.

According to a separate survey released Tuesday by KFF, 45 percent of Asian immigrants say the way Trump talks about immigrants has negatively affected the way they’re treated. Just 7 percent said that about Harris. In fact, 30 percent of Asian immigrants said Harris’ rhetoric has had a positive effect on how they have been treated. 

Chen pointed to Georgia as a state where AAPI voters — particularly newly registered voters — could make a difference. Biden won the state in 2020 by less than 12,000 votes in a year with about 39,000 first-time AAPI voters, she said. 

Ramakrishnan said the second biggest issue for AAPI voters is abortion, which Harris has made a centerpiece of her candidacy. 

“Asian Americans are some of the strongest supporters of abortion rights in this country,” Ramakrishnan said. “Support for abortion rights is high even among Asian Americans who are predominantly Catholic, like Filipinos. I think something very underappreciated is how much abortion plays a role in the public opinion of Asian American voters.”

Among AAPI voters in the survey, 63 percent said they would not vote for a candidate who does not share their view on abortion policy. There is a 20-point gender split — 72 percent of AAPI women and 52 percent of AAPI men — on the question.

Though there are six weeks until Election Day, Chen said the candidates would be wise to understand that for AAPI voters, the window to reach them is even shorter: in the 2022 midterms, 73 percent voted early or by mail.

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