The News
Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris and her running mate Tim Walz have gained a significant edge over Donald Trump among Asian American and Pacific Islander voters, according to a new poll.
More than two thirds of AAPI voters surveyed plan to vote for Harris, up from 46% who planned to vote for Joe Biden before he bowed out of the race, the poll by APIAVote found. Most have a favorable opinion of both her and Walz.
By contrast, 70% of these voters said they have an unfavorable opinion of Trump, while only one in five approves of Republican vice-presidential candidate JD Vance.
Most respondents said they trust Harris more when it comes to handling relations with Asian countries, while racial discrimination topped the list of issues that AAPI voters find nonnegotiable.
While both parties have boosted their outreach towards Asian American voters in recent months, more reported being contacted by Democrats than Republicans.
SIGNALS
Asian American voters could decide the race in swing states
Once a largely ignored demographic, Asian American voters are now the country’s fastest growing voting bloc and could decide the fate of a neck-and-neck presidential race — and the Democrat campaign in particular has taken notice. In August, Harris spent $90 million airing ads on Asian American TV channels that recounted many Trump’s remarks that drew ire during the coronavirus outbreak, and also held town halls for the Asian community in Nevada. In Wisconsin, a swing state with almost 60,000 eligible Hmong voters, a Democrat running for the state assembly told Nikkei Asia that when AAPI voters don’t have “representatives that look like them, it’s hard for them to understand the impact of our government.”
Chinese language disinformation could complicate the race
Hundreds of pieces of Chinese-language election disinformation have garnered millions of views on X, according to a new report by Chinese for Affirmative Action, a civil rights group. Often generated through AI, the bots reportedly paint Donald Trump as the only one who can stop the Democratic Party from destroying the US and bringing it closer to communism, a false narrative that is “unique to the Chinese-language space,” the group said. Those propagating these false narratives have been “very good at twisting and amplifying them in a way that exploits the historical and cultural trauma of Chinese immigrants,” a Chinese digital advocacy group said.