In Pennsylvania, where more than 250,000 Asian Americans and Pacific Islander reside, the AAPI vote is still divided.
According to The Philadelphia Inquirer, there’s “no such thing as the Asian vote.”
Pennsylvania is considered a key battleground state, one that could decide the election. Both candidates have spent a considerable amount of time in Pennsylvania in the final days of the campaign. Today Joe Biden is there campaigning in Pittsburgh with Lady Gaga and Kamala Harris is in Philadelphia with John Legend. Trump is spending his time in another key state, Michigan.
AAPI make up 4% of Pennsylvania’s eligible electorate. This is still significant because elections can be won by less than 1%, The Philadelphia Inquirer reports.
Helen Gym, the first Asian American woman to serve on Philadelphia City Council corroborated this in her interview with NBC.
In 2016, “Donald Trump [won] by 44,000 votes in the state of Pennsylvania,” Gym said. “AAPIs are the margin of victory in Pennsylvania.”
Furthermore, NBC cites an APIAVote statistic that the Asian American population in Pennsylvania increased by 99% since 2000, supporting the general trend that Asian Americans are the fastest growing electorate.
“It seems like finally political parties and the candidates are recognizing that oh, wow, there’s actually a sizable Asian American electorate in my own back yard,” APIAVote executive director Christine Chen told NBC.
Yet, Asian American voters still remain divided.
Indian American businessman Anup Patel told The Philadelphia Inquirer he will likely vote for President Donald Trump because his business has been good under his administration.
“I’m coming from a business perspective,” Patel said. “Business has been real good for us in the last three years.”
In contrast, paralegal Naimah Hares, told The Philadelphia Inquirer that she will reluctantly vote for Joe Biden.
Hares, the daughter of Bangladeshi immigrants, told The Philadelphia Inquirer she is reluctantly voting for Joe Biden. While she said she was glad to see South Asian representation in his running mate Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), she criticized how Harris handled wrongful conviction cases when she served as San Francisco District Attorney.
A report by the research group New American Economy stated there are almost 305,000 registered Asian voters throughout seven key swing states, including Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina and Wisconsin.
Director of quantitative research at New American Economy told NBC News that this is an important correlation.
“Just from a purely demographic point of view, these are also states that are diversifying very rapidly,” Lim said.
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