UPDATE: This story has been updated with reaction.
Despite President Biden’s high disapproval rate among U.S. voters, support from Asian American voters remains high.
An Emerson College Poll conducted January 19 -21 found 69% of Asian Americans surveyed approve of the job the president is doing with only 29% disapproving.
Compare that to Biden’s approval rating among all voters in the same poll. 47.8% disapprove of how he’s handling his job. 44.2% approve.
Interestingly Biden’s approval rating from Asian Americans is 10 percent higher than those who say they voted for him in 2020.
5.4% of the 1015 voters surveyed were Asian Americans. The 69% support for Biden among Asian Americans is the same among Black voters.
“I think support for Biden is much higher among Asian Americans than the general population (because of) their satisfaction with economic recovery in terms of job availability as well as how Biden has handled the pandemic,” sad Cao K. O, President of the Asian American Institute for Public Policy, to AsAmNews in an email. “Black voters have been solidly Democratic, and probably few would see better policies coming from Republicans.”
The economy is identified as the most important issue among all voters, but Asian Americans rank that issue the highest among all ethnic groups.
Slightly more than 50% of Asian American voters list the economy as the most important issue compared to 43% of all voters.
Health care is the second most important issue with 12.6% of voters listing it as the most important compared to 18.5% of Asian American voters.
Immigration is the third most important issue among Asian Americans with 10.1% listing it as the most important. That’s slightly less than 11.2% of overall voters.
48% of Asian Americans say they are registered Democrats, 34% independent and 18% Republican. However, this Democratic support could be weakening.
“The midterm elections last year seem to suggest that there was some shifting of Asian American support from Democrats toward Republicans in some states, e.g. California and New York,” Cao wrote to AsAmNews. “More polling is needed to see if the shift was temporary or is continuing.”
The Emerson College Poll differs from a Pew Research Poll also taken in January.
In that poll, 54% of Asian American surveyed approved of President Biden’s job performance compared to 38% of overall voters. 45% of Asian voters disapprove.
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