Why are Asian Americans Democrats?

[traininthedistance]

Worth noting that "Asian-American" is pretty uselessly broad, and obscures what is probably an even greater range of experiences and backgrounds than other racial umbrella terms (which themselves are quite broad).  It's a little silly to say that a Syrian, a South Indian, and a Japanese person are all the same race.

But, I'll humor that classification for a moment and point out a factor not mentioned in the article: religion.  The GOP is heavily Christian, and is pretty heavily invested in catering to a normative vision of Christianity in America, which is going to push away the majority of Asians who are of different faiths, or lack faith entirely.  Combined with the "high-achieving model minority" trope, the Asian-American experience seems to somewhat parallel the Jewish-American experience- and Jews vote Democratic at similar rates.

[traininthedistance]

Race is an artificial construct.  Asia is real.  Culture is also real, and I still think that collectivism in cultures is a major factor.

I guess I don't understand a definition of collectivism that could apply to both Chinese and Indian culture in a meaningful way, and which also accounts for high rates of entrepreneurship among South Asians in the U.S. Please tell me more.

You seem to be thinking the same thing I am thinking, which is that there are exceptions.  I was going to go on a diatribe about Indians not being as overwhelmingly Democrat to the degree that East Asians would be, but was too lazy to look up a bunch of stats.  Feel free to do that.  I'm honestly a little too lazy, but I certainly don't disagree with you.

I don't remember where I read this (it was probably on this site, actually), but IIRC Vietnamese and Filipinos are the most Republican Asian groups currently (because of anti-Communism and Catholicism respectively), whereas Japanese-Americans are one of the most Democratic, in large part because they are just about the least religious ethnic group out there.

[traininthedistance]

One other point -- there are presently 11 Asians in Congress and all of them are Democrats.  The GOP does not currently have even one token Asian on their side, as they did in some past years.  While simply putting an Asian face on the same policy isn't going to solve the problem, we shouldn't overlook the power of visual representation.  These Congresscritters are a natural bridge to Asian voters.

Bobby Jindal?