By Randall Yip, Executive Editor
Asian Americans attending the Democratic Convention in Chicago emphasized Wednesday that AAPI voters can be the difference makers in the presidential election.
Tonight, Kamala Harris will officially accept the nomination for president, becoming the first Asian American and Black woman ever to be nominated for the nation’s top office.
Data shared by Christine Chen, executive director of APIA Vote, showed that the number of Asian American and Pacific Islander voters well surpassed the margin of victory in eight hotly contested states.
The data also shows that the percentage of first time Asian American voters in the 2020 election surpassed 20% in six battleground states. Chen expressed confidence the turnout of AAPI voters will increase once again in 2024.
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Rep. Jill Tokuda (D-HI) urged Democrats to mobilize to get the AAPI vote out.
“It’s about making sure the language access is available so they can vote. It is incumbent on us to act with urgency. We need to make sure we meet people where they are at,” she said during a virtual news conference attended by AsAmNews.
Asian American and Pacific Islander voters lean Democrat with 42% of those surveyed identifying as Democrats, 31% Independent and 22% Republican, according to the latest AAPI Voter Survey released last month.
Rep Judy Chu (D-CA), chair of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, says with just more than 70 days left before the November 5 election, says the race will come down to battleground states and a few hundred votes.
“In Philadelphia there were 20,000 new AANHPI voters in 2020 and Biden only won by 12,000 votes,” said Chu. “The reason they came out was that they were contacted by so many AANHPI orgs. That is very important. I hope we can accelerate the whole process to hope that every voter can be contacted.”
In the AAPI Voter survey, 50% of the 2,479 polled said they had not been contacted by the Democratic Party and 57% had not been contacted by the Republicans.
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