Why are Asian Americans Democrats?

[Ogre Mage]

Three Asian-American professors conducted a study on this issue.

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http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/03/asian-americans-democrats-104763.html#.UyqaAYVN1hc

[Ban my account ffs!]

Compared to other minority groups, Asians are relatively more right wing.  But when the GOP started running rightward as fast as they could and the Democrats kinda came in to replace them... Asians were like "well I guess I'm a Democrat now"

Of course that's a very simplistic way of putting a complicated issue.

[Joe Republic]

The GOP is the WASP party.

[Mordecai]

Asians can be very conservative and devoutly religious, but not in an overtly zealous or fundamentalist way. They also highly value education and can be technocratic, so anti-intellectualism, attacks on academia and attacks on science don't go down well with them.

Also, the newer generation of Asians did not grow up during Cold War so they are comfortable as Clinton Democrats.

[pbrower2a]

Conservative style and high incomes usually relate to political and economic conservatism... but not with minorities in any way visible. Such may imply the potential for a cultural clash so long as a tradition with a marked difference from the cultural mainstream gets credit for personal success. So it has been with American Jews for over a century. If they are successful they have good cause to resist assimilation or what they think annihilates their means of success or their identity as a group.

Anti-communism is still a factor in the politics of some Asian communities, but not as much as it used to be, at least with respect to the People's Republic of China. Forty years ago the People's Republic of China was infamous for its loud promotion of world revolution and hostility to all tradition in any way compatible with religion or enterprise, and the American Right exploited that to the fullest. That is past.  China is now a good place in which to conduct business and it isn't going to export any ideology. The only large Asian-American communities that have big problems with Communism are those with large refugee populations (Vietnamese-Americans) and those associated with an internal divide within a country (Korean-Americans still hostile to the DPRK... as if anyone has anything good to say about DPRK leadership).

The People's Republic of China has done much to allay fears of Asian-Americans of Communism. China has plenty of exports, but its political order is apparently not one of them.

The GOP is the WASP party.

The GOP is the Party of WASP elites in all parts of the US... and of the WASP poor in the Mountain and Deep South. The WASP economic elite has been slow to intermarry with non-WASP high-achievers whom the WASP economic elite, North or South, consider at best nouveaux-riches. The Republican Party has fostered anti-intellectualism that excites  people of low educational attainment but offends anyone who attributes his success to learning, and such hurts the GOP appeal to almost anyone non-white, non-Christian, or non-Anglo. The problem that the GOP has in getting the Asian-American vote is much the same as its difficulty in winning the Jewish, middle-class black, and middle-class Hispanic vote.  Until the GOP abandons its anti-intellectualism it will keep losing non-white, non-Anglo, and non-Christian voters no matter how successful those voters are.   


   

[angus]

Why are Asian Americans Democrats?

I didn't click on the link, but I think that it's primarily because they are collectivist by nature.  Neither of the two major parties here are very collectivist, but the Democrat party is more so, at least for now.  I think this is also the reason most latinos vote Democrat.  They want a bigger role for government than most anglophones do.  (More than most Democrats and most Republicans do, but those are the two main choices and Democrats are closer to that ideal.) 

[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.

[Brittain33]

Generalizations about Asian voters, in particular those that ascribe voting behavior to a cultural value, are hard to support across multiple nationalities. There's little that South Asian and, say, Chinese immigrants have in common. What the American-born generation largely shares with their parents is an appreciation for diversity and belonging to the U.S. When the Republicans talk about Real America and how great things were before modern immigration, even if you were born and raised in the U.S. and identify fully as American, it's going to alienate you.

[Joshgreen]

Because the Republicans don't like no immigrunts...

[angus]

racial ...

silly ...

race.

I agree with that.  After I saw your post I looked at the article and I see that they say that among other factors, race is a factor.  I don't think this playing the race card here is useful analysis.  Absent your post, I assumed Asian-American in this context merely refers to US voters of Asian extraction. 

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

Also, there is a nativist/nationalistic element in the Republican party that might not appeal to newly-immigrated voters.  But mostly it's a failure to identify with the individualism of the American Right.  It'd be interesting to look at second-generation people, and see if they go to the extreme, voting Libertarian in significant numbers, perhaps as a form of rebellion against their parents.  That study might also have to control for cultural factors which may inhibit mass rebellion in the first place. 

[Brittain33]

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.

[pbrower2a]

Why are Asian Americans Democrats?

I didn't click on the link, but I think that it's primarily because they are collectivist by nature.

Only to the extent that they are heavily urban, which means that they are committed to a high-cost, high-service government just to keep things from falling apart. Add to that -- they rely heavily upon public education, and the longer that goes, the more likely they are to be net debtors for years (debtors are more likely to go Left) -- and the more likely they are to attribute such successes as they have to education.

They are no more collectivist than Scandinavian-Americans whose liberal-conservative divide lies largely with whether they live in urban (Suburbia is now urban) or rural areas.   

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Middle-class Latinos are closer to the Asian profile of being urban and educated. Few people wish to be consigned to a permanent underclass of cheap, expendable, scared labor that the extreme anti-collectivists want.   

[bedstuy]

Asians aren't culturally part of white America.  A lot of conservatism is a certain American exceptionalism and fear over the compromising of Americanism by leftists, atheists, minorities and gays.  Asians are outsiders to that version of America so they don't have that interest in defending the conservative notion of America.

Asians are also well-educated and believe in the authority of intellectuals and experts.  Education generally makes you more open-minded and less conservative.  Plus, a lot of conservatism is built on anti-intellectualism and denying the academic consensus.  Just look at Austrian economics or global warming denialism, conservatives are willing to buck the expert consensus.  Asians are just going to trust the economics department at a university over the hobbyist/conspiracy theorist type thinking of conservatives.

[Beet]

Asian Americans are assimilating. We can debate the extent to which Republicans welcome minorities or not. But one of the norms in American culture these days is that minorities are supposed to be Democratic. Asian Americans who still identify with their home country could easily vote Republican due to foreign policy issues. Or they could identify strongly as American but vote based on their interpretation of the issues (pro-business, Christian) irregardless of cultural norms. But once they encounter this cultural norm that Republicans are unfriendly to minorities, that is going to push them in a Democratic direction. It also helps that the vast majority of them are concentrated in places like California, Hawaii, New York, and New Jersey where assimilation means assimilating into a Democratic-dominated political culture.

[All Along The Watchtower]

^Beet has the correct answer. Others have made good points, though.

[hopper]

Asian Americans are assimilating. We can debate the extent to which Republicans welcome minorities or not. But one of the norms in American culture these days is that minorities are supposed to be Democratic. Asian Americans who still identify with their home country could easily vote Republican due to foreign policy issues. Or they could identify strongly as American but vote based on their interpretation of the issues (pro-business, Christian) irregardless of cultural norms. But once they encounter this cultural norm that Republicans are unfriendly to minorities, that is going to push them in a Democratic direction. It also helps that the vast majority of them are concentrated in places like California, Hawaii, New York, and New Jersey where assimilation means assimilating into a Democratic-dominated political culture.

Yeah that and and Asian Voters are very science & tech and the GOP is boring in those areas. Also and I think this has been kind of highlighted on this thread is that the GOP became a Southern Bible Belt party  and Asian Voters couldn't relate to that.

Also, Asians are mostly likely to be migrants from other countries rather than being born here in the US. I saw something that Asian Immigration into the US actually dropped off in the decade in the 1990's. I forget when it started to bump up again in the 2000's.

[All Along The Watchtower]

Asians are just going to trust the economics department at a university over the hobbyist/conspiracy theorist type thinking of conservatives.

Which is interesting, because in my experience, economics departments tend to be more conservative  than other disciplines, anyway! Milton Friedman or whomever may have been respectable (if quite conservative), but the Republicans steady embrace of voodoo economics as a method of "starving the beast" in order to force austerity on the population is bad enough; the Austrian/Libertarian types that have gained currency on the Internet and among politicians like Rand Paul is even more out of the mainstream!

I think the Asian immigrants who came to the US in the mid-to-latter half of the 20th century were obviously more conservative than their children and grandchildren are. Those who did  vote tended to be wealthier and either in business/entrepreneurial or scientific/engineering occupations , which in that time, typically meant Republicans. Remember, American conservatism was quite a bit more mainstream and popular (Reagan, anyone? ) back then. Moreover, Reagan may have paid lip service to the Religious Right, but most of his philosophy focused on  economics, reducing  the size of government, and defeating the USSR.  So I don't think it's a stretch to imagine that the more mainstream conservatism of the time would be popular among wealthy Asian-American voters, in addition to groups from Communist countries like the Vietnamese.

As far as the more assimilated generations of Asian-Americans go; Beet answered that better than I could.

[angus]

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.  I decided instead to analyze the East Asians.  Feel free to look up stats for Indians.  I'm honestly a little too lazy, but I certainly don't disagree with you, at least qualitatively.

[King]

The Asian community in some ways needs immigration reform more than Hispanics because the visa program is a confusing mess.

Also, I imagine the Christian stuff is even more offputting to non-Christian religious than it is non-religious.

Third, the assimilation points for most children of Asian immigrants is Los Angeles, San Francisco Bay, Seattle. Very liberal peers.

[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.

[angus]

Here's what I could find from the National Asian=American Survey:

"In 1992, Asian-Americans favored George H. W. Bush over Bill Clinton, and four years later they went for Bob Dole."  In 2008, 62% Asian-Americans voted for Obama.  Only exception was that 67% of Vietnamese Americans voted for McCain in 2008 (Highest among various self-identified Asian groups).  In 2012, 71% of Asian-Americans voted for Obama.  (Some articles put that number at 70%, others as high as 73%.  Take your pick.)

Lots of analysis.  One interesting article by Lloyd Green implies, sort of, that it isn't really an Asian-American thing at all.  He points out that they are largely a subset of all American voters who have "turned their backs on the Republican Party."  This subset he calls high-tech voters.  "High-tech America’s aversion to the Republican Party is wreaking havoc with mechanics of national Republican campaigns."  He also points to the fact that Asians are not as responsive to the Republican brand of "rugged individualism," which was my instinctive analysis as well.

Caroline Chen also points to collectivism, but makes other cultural arguments as well ("friendly to immigrants" etc., basically what I posted earlier).  

I suppose there are many reasons for this trend.  There's certainly no shortage of analysis.  You get about a million hits if you search for Asian voters Republican Democrat or something like that.

[Хahar 🤔]

Asians are Democrats because they're not white.

[Starbucks Union Thug HokeyPuck]

Asians are well-educated, you see...

[IceSpear]

The GOP thrives off No Information Voters (ie FOX watchers). Asians tend to be very well educated. 1992 was largely before the GOP began appealing to the least common denominator with their War on Education/Science/Logic.

[Clarko95 📚💰📈]

Let's not forget the Muslim American vote has a role in this too.


While I'm not sure how many Asians are Muslims, and IIRC most Muslim Americans are actually black Americans, the fact that they went from voting something like 90% for George W. Bush in 2000 to some 85% for John Kerry in 2004 sure hasn't helped the GOP.