In the 1990s, Asian-Americans (other than Japanese-Americans and South Asians) generally saw some Communist menace in their lands of origin, and tended to vote Republican out of anti-Communist sentiment. Although Japanese-Americans have become less important among the 'Asian' category except in Hawaii, the 'Red' menace has abated as China and Vietnam have become increasingly capitalist. North Korea remains as an offense toward any Korean-American, but the American Left has largely shown hatred for the regime.
Diverse as 'Asian' groups are (they contain people as different as Pakistanis and either Filipinos or Japanese), they all have much respect for intellectual achievement and are generally better-educated and sophisticated in culture than most Americans. Republicans have since started to show a wide-ranging anti-intellectualism which offends anyone, whatever ethnicity or religion, who has respect for the creative and practical value of the intellect.
If it were entirely over economic issues such as taxes, these groups would mostly vote Republican. See also Jews, middle-class Hispanics and the black bourgeoisie who vote to the Left of white gentiles under similar SES (social-economic status).
It would be interesting to see where the Asian vote went in elections before 1992, which is the earliest election for which I can find
exit poll data.
If we assume Dukakis won 6 percent more than Clinton in 1992 (corresponding to the difference in the Democratic percentage in Hawaii between 1988 and 1992) he would have won only 37 percent of Asian voters, which is actually
3 percent less than he won amongst whites. It is easy to imagine that this gap might have been even larger with Carter and Mondale, especially as Anderson could well have won over ten percent of Asian voter in 1980 – and given his very poor result in California, Carter might have won
under 30 percent of Asian voters in that election.
