Asian Americans have run away from the Republican party in the last 20 years faster than any other voting group, reports the Los Angeles Times.
That isn’t news to Asian Americans who follow politics closely, but perhaps what is news is the Republicans struggle to win that vote back.
The Grand Old Party which has become more white, more conservative and decisively older in those 20 years holds out hope it can reverse the trend.
Speaking about the Asian American voter, the political scientist who runs the National Asian American Survey says that’s not an impossible task.
“This is a group that shifted pretty quickly in the last 20 years,” said Karthick Ramakrishnan, a political science professor at UC Riverside. “There’s nothing to say they won’t shift back again, given the right circumstances.”
The numbers tell the story.
In 1992, George W Bush won 55 percent of the Asian American vote, but starting with President Clinton Asian Americans have become increasingly Democratic to the point that President Obama won 73 percent of the Asian American vote in 2012. That’s even more than the 71 percent of the Latino vote the president won in his reelection.
Republicans have embarked on a
new strategy to change that. They’ve done everything from
hiring staff specifically assigned to reaching out to Asian American voters to doing simple things like making proclamations about Diwaili, the Hindu celebration of the Festival of Lights.
GOP spokesman Jason Chung says the idea is to “learn about these communities [and] communicate our positions and principles to them. But more important is listening to them and seeing what their needs are.”
You can read more about the strategy to chip away the Democratic stronghold on the Asian American vote in the
Los Angeles Times.
Related
Asian Americans have run away from the Republican party in the last 20 years faster than any other voting group, reports the Los Angeles Times.
From @ErwinDeLeon via Twitter Re: Republicans face long odds in winning back Asian American vote: Not impossible but GOP needs to work honestly on diversity and immigration before it wins the Asian vote