Asian American Political Participation Research Articles

The Asian American Vote in 2020: Indicators of Turnout and Vote Choice.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11109-022-09844-9.

From Inter-Racial Solidarity to Action: Minority Linked Fate and African American, Latina/o, and Asian American Political Participation

Recent literature in race, ethnicity, and politics has assessed how minority linked fate, defined as “the idea that ethnoracial minorities might share a sense of commonality that extends beyond their particular ethnoracial group to other ethnoracial groups (Gershon et al., in Politics Groups Identities 7(3):642–653, 2019),” shapes attitudes toward descriptive representation and support for coalition building. However, scholarship has yet to examine the influence of minority linked fate on political participation. We argue that similar to those who view the interests of co-ethnics as a proxy for their individual interests, Latina/os, Asian Americans, and African Americans who express linked fate with a more expansive minority community are more likely to take political action. This political participation results from senses of obligation to and solidarity with other racial minorities outside of their own. Results from the 2016 Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey show that controlling for conventional measures of linked fate, minority linked fate is associated primarily with more system-challenging modes of political activity for Latina/os, Asian Americans, and African Americans. We conclude by positioning minority linked fate as a complementary heuristic to traditional notions of intra-racial linked fate and note how shared inter-racial linked fate informs our understanding of recent political activism among people of color.

Political Inequality in the Digital World: The Puzzle of Asian American Political Participation Online

This paper adds to existing literature by reassessing the racial participation gap after placing online activity within the repertoire of minorities’ political actions. Even though Asian Americans are the most resourced in terms of Internet access, I theorize about how individual and structural-level impediments uniquely disadvantage this group from participating in politics online—widening overall participation disparities. Using data from the 2016 National Asian American Survey, I find that while the racial participation gap is similar for Latina/os and African Americans compared to whites, regardless of the activity’s platform either offline or online, disparities magnify solely for Asian Americans when considering digital modes of political behavior. The paper ends by noting how the Internet may contribute to rather than solve issues of political inequality across race and discusses distortions in which political voices are heard or muted offline and online.

The Ties that Bind: Assessing the Effects of Political and Racial Church Homogeneity on Asian American Political Participation

AbstractResearch consistently emphasizes the importance of religious institutions for influencing political action among Asian Americans. The social capital literature offers two theoretical explanations for why churches increase political activity: bridging capital between different groups and bonding capital among similar groups. The latter argues that individuals who attend racially homogeneous churches are more participatory. This paper expands on these accounts by examining another aspect of bonding. That is, how does similarity in political views among church members affect Asian Americans' political participation? Results from the 2016 Collaborative Multi-Racial Post-Election Survey show that Asian Americans who attend politically homogeneous churches are more likely to vote and participate in conventional activities. The effects of racial homogeneity are limited once taking political homogeneity into consideration. These findings provide evidence that political homophily within religious organizations may facilitate the bonding of social capital between racial/ethnic minorities, and this homophily is indeed salient to democratic participation.

New Asian American Voters: Political Incorporation and Participation in 2016

In 2016, Asian Americans represented the fastest growing racial minority group in the United States largely due to the flow of new immigration. As a result, Asian Americans are poised to be the next major bloc of new voters in the electorate. Yet, as a largely new immigrant group, institutional barriers—in particular, naturalization and registration—are important factors which need to be more thoroughly taken into account when explaining Asian American participation patterns. In this article, we show how scholars can adopt a different strategy of analysis that recognizes both institutional barriers to political participation through immigrant status and variation across national origin group. We argue that structural impediments to participation and national origin differences have not been fully accounted for in previous explanations of Asian American political participation. Our analysis shows that when Asian Americans are disaggregated by incorporation status (being registered to vote, eligible but not registered to vote, or noncitizen), we gain new insights about the factors that predict political participation. The findings from an analysis of 2016 election data feature the unique behaviors of Filipinos, Asian Indians, and the Vietnamese and highlight that second-generation Asian Americans are not necessarily more participatory than their immigrant counterparts.

Asian American political participation: trends, developments and perspectives

Asian American political participation: trends, developments and perspectives

Superficial Equality: Gender and immigration in Asian American political participation

ABSTRACTAsian American men and women have voted at roughly similar rates across the last three presidential elections. This sets Asian Americans apart; women in America have generally voted at higher rates than men since the 1980s. The women in politics and immigrant incorporation literatures suggest that pathways to participation may be distinct for women and men. Yet, there is scant attention to gender in studies of Asian American political participation. As a result, little theoretical or empirical foundation exists for explaining why the gender gap in participation is so different for Asian Americans. To better understand this puzzle, we analyze pooled data from the National Asian American Surveys of 2008, 2012, and 2016. The data show that women are less likely to vote than men once we account for variables related to resources, mediating institutions, and immigrant incorporation. We also demonstrate that Asian American women who are foreign-born citizens are less likely to participate across a range of modes of political action, and across ethnic groups. We argue that this is evidence that gender and ethnicity simultaneously condition the processes of immigrant political incorporation, and the study of gender gaps must be approached more broadly as a political and comparative phenomenon.

Understanding the Asian American Vote in the 2016 Election

AbstractAs the number of Asian American voters has increased with each election, more research is needed to understand the participation and voting patterns of this diverse electorate. This paper offers an analysis of Asian American political participation and vote choice preferences during the 2016 presidential election. The paper begins by addressing the concerns related to Asian American political incorporation. We disaggregate Asian Americans into three voting types—voters, those who are eligible to vote but are not registered, and those who are ineligible to vote—and compare the demographic differences found across these three groups. The second half of the paper turns to Asian American candidate preferences in the 2016 election. We find that voters who report high levels of media consumption and those with a strong sense of political efficacy were more likely to support Clinton. Our analysis of non-voters suggests that the potential incorporation of these Asian Americans would result in a continued base of support for the Democratic party.

Examining the Causal Impact of the Voting Rights Act Language Minority Provisions

AbstractThe following study investigates the causal impact of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) language minority provisions, which mandate multilingual election assistance if certain population thresholds are met. While lower rates of Latino and Asian American political participation are often attributed to language barriers, scholars have yet to establish a direct impact of the provisions on electoral behavior. Building off of previous state- and county-level analyses, we leverage an individual-level voter file database to focus on participation by Latino and Asian American citizens in 1,465 counties and municipalities nationwide. Utilizing a regression discontinuity design, we examine rates of voter registration and turnout in the 2012 election, comparing individual participation rates in jurisdictions just above and just below the threshold for coverage. Our analysis attributes a significant increase in Latino voter registration and Asian American turnout to coverage under the VRA.

Asian American Political Participation: Emerging Constituents and Their Political Identities

Asian American Political Participation: Emerging Constituents and Their Political Identities

Asian American Political Participation: Emerging Constituents and Their Political Identities. By Janelle Wong, S. Karthick Ramakrishnan, Taeku Lee, and Jane Junn. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2011. 392p. $29.95.

Asian American Political Participation: Emerging Constituents and Their Political Identities. By Janelle Wong, S. Karthick Ramakrishnan, Taeku Lee, and Jane Junn. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2011. 392p. $29.95.

Asian Americans Distinct Politically

I read Anil G. Jacob's piece in the January 2006 issue of PS (“Asian American Political Participation: Research Challenges for an Emerging Minority,” 103–106) with a mixture of admiration and consternation. He has my admiration for getting published as a graduate student, and that too in PS —a feat that I'm sure will stand him good measure when he is on the job market. However, he has my consternation because he makes slight of a field that has, especially in the last five years, produced a good deal of scholarship on a myriad of questions relating to Asian-American political behavior.

Asian American Political Participation: Research Challenges for an Emerging Minority

Asian Americans are among the fastest-growing minority groups in the United States. In recent years, their impact on politics has been the focus of a growing number of scholars in the social sciences, which raises the definitional question: Who are Asian Americans? The working definition deployed here is that an Asian American is a person who “resides in the United States on a permanent or long-term basis, regardless of citizenship or other legal status” (Lien, Conway, and Wong 2004). However, the definition of who an Asian is has undergone significant expansion over the last 150 years because of “shifts in the racial and ethnic makeup of the U.S. population and changes in social attitudes and political concerns regarding racial and ethnic minorities” (Lien, Conway, and Wong 2004). These concerns expressed themselves in various modes of political participation; referred to in the literature as the “Asian American movement” (Wei 1993), these have ranged from litigation to the boycott activities of Asian Americans on a variety of issues. I would like to extend my gratitude to Jane Junn of Rutgers University as well as to members of the APSA Committee on the Status of Asian Pacific Americans in the Profession for encouragement and valuable feedback on this article.

Getting Out the Vote among Asian Americans in Los Angeles County: The Effects of Phone Canvassing

Asian Americans, one of the fastest growing segments of the American population, demonstrate the lowest turnout rates of any major ethnic or racial group (Jamieson, Shin and Day 2002). According to the Current Population Survey, 43 percent of Asian American citizens of voting age turned out in the 2000 Presidential election, compared to 62 percent of non-Latino whites, 57 percent of non-Latino blacks, and 45 percent of Latinos (Jamieson, Shin and Day 2002).2 In light of these stark racial gaps in voter turnout, research on Asian American political participation is critical for understanding the prospects for and limits to full participation in the United States among the country's increasingly diverse population. This study examines the effects of mobilization on political participation among Asian Americans, focusing in particular on whether telephone canvassing increases voter turnout among Asian Americans who live in high-density Asian American areas of Los Angeles County.