Asian American Voting trends

From the 1940s to the 1990s most Asian Americans were anti-communist refugees who had fled mainland China, North Korea or Vietnam, and were strongly anti-Communist. Many had ties to conservative organizations. In recent years, more liberal Asian-American groups such as newer Chinese and Indian immigrants have greatly changed the Asian-American political demographics, as well as a larger proportion of younger Asian Americans, many of whom have completed college degrees.

In the 1992 presidential election Republican George H. W. Bush received 55% of the Asian-American vote compared to 31% for Democrat Bill Clinton. Asian Americans voted Republican and were the only racial group more conservative than whites in the 1990s, according to surveys. The Asian American vote has slowly shifted since then with Democrat John Kerry winning 56% of the Asian American vote in the 2004 U.S. Presidential Election; Chinese and Indian Americans were more likely to support John Kerry, whereas Vietnamese and Filipino Americans supported George Bush. The Japanese leaned towards Kerry, while the Koreans leaned towards Bush. Democrat Barack Obama won 62% of the Asian American vote in the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election, with the margin increasing during the 2012 United States presidential elections, where Asian American voters voted to re-elect Democrat Barack Obama by 73%.

Overall, Asian Americans as a whole tend to vote for Democrats, but this trend has been fairly recent. As recently as 2000 polling number had difficulty determining Asian American voter affiliation. With some polls indicating a tendency to vote Republican, while other polls indicated a trend to vote Democrat. Due to the smaller size of the groups population, in comparison to the population as a whole, it remains difficult to get an adequate sampling to forecast voter outcomes for Asian Americans. In 2008, polls indicated that 35% considered themselves non-partisan, 32% Democrats, 19% independents, and 14% Republicans.  The 2012 National Asian American Survey, conducted by Professor Ramakrishnan of UC Riverside and Professor Lee of UC Berkeley, found that 51% considered themselves non-partisan, 33% Democrats, 14% Republicans, and 2% Other;[ Hmong, Indian, and Korean Americans strongly identified as Democrats, and Filipino and Vietnamese Americans most strongly identified as Republicans. In 2013, according to the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, Chinese Americans were the least likely Asian American ethnicity to have a party affiliation, with only one third belonging to a party.  In the 2014 midterm elections, based on exit polls, 50% of Asian Americans voted Republican, while 49% voted Democrat; this swing towards voting for Republicans was a drastic change from the support given to the Obama re-election in 2012, and had not reached 50% since 1996.

Neither the Republican nor Democratic parties have financed significant efforts to the registration of Asian Americans, however much more attention has been focused on contributions from Asian Americans, having once been referred to as "Republican Jews". As recently as 2006 the outreach of America's two major political parties have been unbalanced, with the Democratic Party devoting more resources in attracting Asian Americans. Political affiliation aside, Asian Americans have trended to become more politically active as a whole, with 2008 seeing an increase of voter participation by 4% to a 49% voting rate.

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