They voted for Obama more frequently than any racial group other than blacks and their vote swings more than any other racial group from election to election.
But they only account for about 3% of the people who voted in the last presidential election and only about 55% of eligible Asian voters are registered to vote (that’s lower than the registration rate of 18-24 year olds. Only those without high school educations vote less than Asians.
Why are Asians so bad at voting. Are the incentives different for Asians than they are for larger minority groups?
Asians only make up 4.8% of the U.S. population. Only two states have a significant populatio: California (13%) and Hawaii(38%). A few others in the 5-8% range with the solid majority under 3%. From what I remember, a 3% voting block vs a 4.8% of the population is a better ratio than Hispanic voting.
If I was going to make a WAG why they have lower registration rates I would say Asian immigrant communities tend to be a little more insular.
Ok I found the chart I was looking for, have posted it previously:
Voter turnout by race shows Whites and Blacks have the higher turnout, Hispanics and “Other” are virtually tied. (From here). So I would say your OP is working from a false premise.
According to** CarnalK’s **graph, roughly 40% of Asians of voting actually vote, so if that’s 40% of 4.8% of the population, that’s about 2% of the total population.
Overall, I’d say the Asian vote isn’t terribly important; it’s not enough districts in CA to swing anything, and Hawaii only has 4 electoral votes anyway.
This is my go-to source for these questions - shows Asians as 3.8% of eligible voters, 2.9% of actual voters - which works out to a 47.3% voter participation rate (US total rate is 61.8%.
So its not horrible compared to the Hispanic vote buts its low.
Considering how close a lot of the swing states are, and considering that Asians seem to swing more than other demographics, I thought that Obama’s slight focus on the Asian vote was the start of something. But it seems to have withered on the vine.
And HI and CA are reliably Democratic already, so that doesn’t make much difference. Although with HI, it might be a chicken and egg thing. It might be reliably Democratic because the Asian population is so large…
