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Taeku Lee, University of California- Berkeley

Thus "Asian American opinion" is highly sensitive to survey sampling methods, context effects, and "house" effects. Two exit polls fielded in California following the 1996 general elections, for instance, reached opposite conclusions about Asian American partisanship. The Voter New Service (VNS) found Asian Americans to be more Republican than Democratic (48% to 32%), while the Los Angeles Times found Asian Democrats outnumbered Asian Republicans (44% to 33%). To compound matters, a conspicuous number of Asian Americans find the choice of "Democrat" or "Republican" to be irrelevant or inadequate. In large sample, multi-ethnic, multi-lingual surveys of Asian Americans, at least half of the respondents choose to identify themselves as Independents or otherwise declare themselves as non-partisans.

Notwithstanding this seemingly elusory nature of Asian American partisan habits, there is a clear and growing trend. Unlike the ambiguity and contradictions typifying earlier studies, the most recent data suggest that Asian Americans are unmistakably aligning themselves as Democrats. In the post-election 2001 Pilot National Asian American Politics Study (PNAAPS)-the first multi-city, multi-ethnic, multi-lingual academic survey of Asian Americans-respondents identifying themselves as Democrats outnumbered those identifying themselves as Republicans by a margin of more than two-to-one. The pattern held across all ethnic subgroups except for Vietnamese Americans (who lean modestly toward the Republican Party). Moreover, according to VNS, a substantial majority of Asian Americans voted for Al Gore over George W. Bush in 2000 (55% to 41%). At the same time, local, multi-lingual, multi-ethnic exit polls in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York City found even more decisive margins for Gore (as high as 78% to 20% in NYC). The PNAAPS survey finds that even Vietnamese Americans were likelier to vote for Gore than Bush. Moreover, recent studies by the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund in New York and Asian Pacific American Legal Center in Southern California found marked increases in Asian American registered Democrats.

While the partiality toward Democratic partisanship in 2000 is unequivocal, it is hardly an indication that an Asian American bloc vote for the Kerry-Edwards ticket is a foregone conclusion. As UCLA Professor Don Nakanishi has noted and as the experience of the 80-20 Initiative (a PAC that aimed to deliver 80 percent of the Asian vote in 2000 to the presidential candidate most committed to Asian American interests) has shown, Asian Americans remain poised to be a swing vote. Moreover, it remains to be seen how the Asian American vote will be affected by 9/11 and the subsequent war on terrorism abroad and restrictions on immigration and civil liberties at home. Ultimately, how the vote choice of Asian Americans unfolds in the coming months may depend on time-honored factors like whether Asian Americans naturalize as citizens and register as voters, whether partisan and non-partisan activists organize mobilization efforts, whether candidates make personal appeals, and-not to forget-how the weather is on election Tuesday.

Taeku Lee is associate professor of political science at the University of California- Berkeley. He can be reached at taekulee@uclink.berkeley.edu and 510-642-4640.