When exit polls showed that Hillary Clinton won the Asian American vote 3-1 against Barack Obama in the California primary, some pundits and scholars blamed racism for Clinton’s margin. If it had been true that a significant number of Asian Americans rejected Obama because of his race, John McCain should have an opportunity to capture these votes in the general election. But after Clinton conceded defeat, a June SurveyUSA poll found that 68 percent of Asian Americans in California, regardless of party affiliation, said they would vote for Obama, while only 27 percent said they would support McCain. No other group expressed stronger support for Obama except for African Americans. 

It’s tempting to conclude from these results that a strong majority of Asian Americans will back Obama this November, but the Asian sample size was probably too small. Except for the California and New York/New Jersey exit polls, no other scientifically sound survey measured Asian American opinion of the presidential candidates. “It’s a group that is understudied and underpolled,” says Sergio Bendixen, president of polling firm Bendixen and Associates, which conducted a rare national political survey of Asians in 2004. “The media doesn’t pay attention to these voters, which is a mistake.”

But on the basis of extensive interviews conducted among Asian voters in Southern California and discussions with political scientists and other experts who study the Asian American vote, it is possible to draw tentative conclusions about where Asian American voters are headed, and these conclusions bear out what polls have found. Asians are becoming more Democratic with each election, and Barack Obama is likely to benefit from this trend.

Asian Americans are the fastest growing segment of the electorate. According to Bendixen, their numbers doubled to 4 percent over the past two presidential election cycles. And while they comprise only 5 percent of the U.S. population, the majority live in three politically powerful states — California, New York and Texas — and in Hawaii. Some swing states, such as Florida and Virginia, also have sizeable Asian populations, and they are a group, along with Latinos, that will continue to grow at the fastest rates, according to Census projections.

Since the 1990s, Asian Americans have become more Democratic, spurred, in part, by the anti-immigrant sentiment fueled by the Republican-sponsored Proposition 187 in California, where most Asians live. (The ballot initiative sought to deny undocumented immigrants basic benefits, such as healthcare and education, but a federal court found the measure unconstitutional.) There, only 39 percent of Asians voted for Bill Clinton in 1992, but four years later, 51 percent backed the Democratic incumbent, according to exit polls. By 2000, 63 percent supported Al Gore, and in 2004, 66 percent backed John Kerry. Among 18- to 24-year-old Asian Americans, nearly half — 47 percent — identified as Democrats, making this group as Democratic as young blacks and Latinos, according to a 2007 poll conducted for Harvard University’s Institute of Politics. Only 15 percent of the Asian young adults said they were Republicans.