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Taeku Lee, University of California- Berkeley

Experts

Andy Aoki Augsburg College 612-330-1634 Immigration and multiculturalism, American identity, race and ethnicity Wendy Tam Cho University of Illinois- Urbana-Champaign 217-333-9588 American politics, with an emphasis in racial and ethnic politics Jane Junn Rutgers University 732-932-9312 Political participation and elections in the U.S., political behavior and attitudes among American minorities and immigrants, theories of democracy, survey research Claire Kim University of California- Irvine 949-824-3192 Racialization and resistance in American politics, politics of Black-Korean conflict, shifting constructions of Asian Americans, marginalization of racial and ethnic groups in American society James Lai Santa Clara University 408-554-5760 U.S. racial and ethnic politics, public policy Don Nakanishi University of California- Los Angeles 310-825-2974 Educational politics, comparative minority politics, with special emphasis on the Asian American experience Karthick Ramakrishnan Public Policy Institute of California 415-291-4457 California politics Janelle Wong University of Southern California 213-740-1696 Race, ethnicity and politics, political participation, public opinion research

In Alien Nation, Peter Brimelow, former senior editor at Forbes and National Review, takes an uncharacteristically coquettish view that "no one has the faintest idea how the Asians will vote" (1995). Indeed, speaking with any precision or predictive punch about how Asian Americans are likely to vote come November can appear a daunting task. There are myriad reasons why this is so, chief among them is the dearth of systematic, reliable data on which to base our expectations. For one thing, despite the fact that the growth of the Asian American population continues to outpace that of all other racial groups, Asian Americans are only 5% of the general population. Thus a large random sample of U.S. adults-say in a pre-election survey or an exit poll-will contain only a handful of persons of Asian descent, and a handful that is biased toward those Asians who are more educated, well-off, U.S.-born, English proficient, and otherwise assimilated into life in the U.S. The costs of obtaining a larger unbiased sample, moreover, can be prohibitive given the linguistic diversity, geographic dispersion, and ethnic heterogeneity of the Asian American community.

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.