AAPIData: Biden +24 among Asian voters (n = 1527, 14% Undecided)

[Asta]

I would imagine that most of the undecideds will end up voting for Biden. According to AALDEF (which is more reliable than mainstream exit polls because they conduct interviews in various Asian languages), Hillary got 79% of the Asian vote.

Also, according to AALDEF, Asian voters overwhelmingly voted for Democratic candidates in the 2018 midterms (in the 75-81% range). Joe Biden will receive about the same level of support.

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Biden will definitely win at least 40% of the Vietnamese American vote. I think he will narrowly win them, but it will be close either way. They’re pretty liberal on policy issues considering how R they vote.

Trump's floor with Chinese Americans is at least 20%. There's no way all 22% Undecided are going to break for Biden, although I can't see most of them going for Trump either. Opposition to affirmative action and skepticism of BLM among adult immigrants doesn’t necessarily translate to Trump support, although it may affect downballot results.

Filipino Americans are relatively socially conservative, but they also may be swayed by Biden's Catholicism and being disproportionately affected by COVID-19. I’m guessing 34% is closer to a Trump ceiling than a median or mode.

Trump will likely gain slightly with Indian American voters, even though they are relatively educated and have experienced more overt discrimination in recent years, because of adult immigrants’ relative interest in geopolitics and affirmative action.

Poll results:
Indian: 66-28-0-6
Chinese: 56-20-2-22
Filipino: 52-34-2-12
Japanese: 62-24-0-14
Korean: 58-26-0-16
Vietnamese: 36-48-0-16
ALL: 54-30-2-14

My estimate- based on gut feeling, the (non-AALDEF) 2016 exit polls, and AAPIData's undecided percentages:
Indian: Biden 65-75, Trump 25-30
Chinese: Biden 64-72, Trump 25-35
Filipino: Biden 60-75, Trump 20-35
Japanese: Biden 68-76, Trump 20-28
Korean: Biden 66-76, Trump 24-30
Vietnamese: Biden 45-55, Trump 43-53
ALL: Biden 65-75, Trump 24-30

I think an AADLEF-type poll that does a good job reaching urban Asian immigrants and their children will show similar results to the more Biden-favorable end of my estimates.

https://gothamist.com/news/asian-voters-nyc-chose-biden-overwhelmingly-election-day-exit-polling-shows?

A snapshot of Asian voters in New York City on Election Day shows an overwhelming preference for Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden as well as high rates of first-time voters coming to the polls Tuesday, according to preliminary exit poll data from the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund.

As part of a national exit poll project that AALDEF has conducted on Election Day since 1988, the advocacy non-profit sent surveyors to 18 polling sites in Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens to speak to in-person voters.

In Queens, voters surveyed expressed a slightly higher preference for President Donald Trump, with 31% of voters choosing the incumbent compared to 66% for Biden. In Brooklyn, the gap was highest for Biden, with 80% of votes for him compared to 18% for Trump. In Manhattan, 72% said they voted for Biden with 25% choosing Trump.

Is this a good or bad performance among NYC AAPIs? Wiki says around half of them (maybe more) live in Queens, and that Queens AAPIs are disproportionately Indian, Bangladeshi, Korean, and Filipino compared to the city. I've never been there but I know that's where Flushing (Chinese enclaves) is.

I used to live in Queens yet I can't confidently make any assessment. But from the raw look, that number doesn't seem good.

I am Korean with a Filipina wife and would be shocked if Trump didn't make gains with Koreans and Filipinos. I don't know about Bangladeshi but at least based on polls, Indians seem to have warmed toward Trump as well.

[Asta]

https://www.aaldef.org/press-release/aaldef-exit-poll-asian-americans-favor-biden-over-trump-68-to-29-played-role-in-close-races-in-georgia-and-other-battleground-states/

[November 13, 2020] The Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF) today released new data from its exit poll of 5,424 Asian American voters in 13 states and Washington, DC, noting the importance of the Asian American vote in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Nevada.

Jerry Vattamala, AALDEF Democracy Program Director, said “Despite the challenges of the pandemic, we dispatched more than 400 volunteers to polling places, interacting with voters in English and nine Asian languages through paper surveys or by providing voters with QR codes to complete the surveys online.”

Among all Asian American voters polled:

Asian Americans favored Joe Biden over Donald Trump by a margin of 68% to 29%.
* There was no gender gap between Asian American men and women, with 67% of women and 66% of men voting for Biden and both groups supporting Trump at 31%.
* The only ethnic group to favor Trump were Vietnamese American voters, by a margin of 57% to 41%.
The breakdown of voters by ethnicity was as follows:

[most D] Bangladeshi > Pakistani > Indo-Caribbean > Arab > Multi-Asian >> Indian >> Other Asian > Chinese > Filipino > Korean > Cambodian >> Vietnamese [most R]

Sigh, I figured there'd be at least one exit poll showing Trump won the Vietnamese vote. I wonder where the discrepancy between this and the AAPI Fund Election Eve poll showing Biden won Vietnamese Americans by over 20 points is coming from.

It looks like the Indian, Korean, Vietnamese, and maybe Filipino + Chinese votes all swung significantly toward Trump.  The Chinese results from this poll are roughly the same as what 2016 NAAS exit polls showed.

First-Time Voters, Political Party, Nativity, English Language Proficiency, and Gender

• 27% were first-time voters; 73% were not first-time voters.

• 54% were registered Democrats; 16% were registered Republicans; 27% were not enrolled in a party; and 3% were enrolled in another party.

• 27% were native-born U.S. citizens; 73% were foreign-born naturalized citizens.

• 7% were limited English proficient (LEP); and 63% spoke English well.

• 52.9% were Female; 46.7% were Male; 0.4% Non-Binary.

Those limited English proficiency numbers (52-46) are terrible for Biden lmao. Surprisingly, the first-time vote was slightly more favorable for Trump (30%) than the non-first-time vote (29%).

Several comments about this:

I can confirm 57-41 sounds about right for Koreans, being one myself. He's clearly done better among Koreans this year. Trump garnered record share of evangelical Christian votes in 2016. And while I speculated he would slip away a bit with white evangelicals, I always knew he has hasn't hit his ceiling with Korean voters, given that overwhelming % of Korean Americans are evangelical Christians.

Another thing I can confirm is that I have talked to some foreign Chinese students and they speak positively of Trump compared to Chinese Americans.

Filipino Americans going for Trump seems to be an Americanized effect. Most native Filipinos I know are supportive of Trump.

Foreign born and native born may have some confounding variables like age. Older generation are less likely to speak proficient English. My parents voted for Trump. My sister and I voted for Biden. I wonder how much of this is due to age, and not so much due to cultural assimilation.

I would like to see the numbers for Japanese if they were polled at all. My best guess is that Japanese swung toward Trump roughly the same margin as Hawaii did.

[Asta]

Several comments about this:

I can confirm 57-41 sounds about right for Koreans, being one myself. He's clearly done better among Koreans this year. Trump garnered record share of evangelical Christian votes in 2016. And while I speculated he would slip away a bit with white evangelicals, I always knew he has hasn't hit his ceiling with Korean voters, given that overwhelming % of Korean Americans are evangelical Christians.

Another thing I can confirm is that I have talked to some foreign Chinese students and they speak positively of Trump compared to Chinese Americans.

Filipino Americans going for Trump seems to be an Americanized effect. Most native Filipinos I know are supportive of Trump.

Foreign born and native born may have some confounding variables like age. Older generation are less likely to speak proficient English. My parents voted for Trump. My sister and I voted for Biden. I wonder how much of this is due to age, and not so much due to cultural assimilation.

I would like to see the numbers for Japanese if they were polled at all. My best guess is that Japanese swung toward Trump roughly the same margin as Hawaii did.

1) I always felt like Republicans have a higher floor with Korean Americans than Chinese Americans. Koreans are more religious (specifically more evangelical Protestant), slightly more downscale, and possibly more likely to be small business owners as well. These factors make them a better demographic fit for the Bush-Trump era GOP.

2) I suspect PRC-origin international students are (relatively) supportive of Trump for different reasons than their Taiwanese or Hong Konger counterparts, including class selection. But there's definitely some tacit acceptance of political authoritarianism/majoritarianism and just-world fallacy involved here that I think is specific to ethnic Chinese who were raised in Asia.

3) No comment on Filipino American voters, other than I don't think Americanization is necessarily correlated with Biden support. As far as 1.5+ gens go, I think the bigger factors are educational attainment, religiosity, and maybe gender.

4) Yeah with Asians, age cohort and immigrant generation trump everything else. Younger and more recent immigrants seem much more liberal/left-leaning across the board compared to my parents' generation or yours, although my personal social network probably isn't representative.

5) Agreed. I think most Japanese Americans are in HI and CA. They're much more assimilated than every other Asian group.

I recall seeing that younger foreign Chinese are more supportive of Trump than the older ones. I can't find that source anymore, but assuming it's true, do you think younger Chinese have more affinity for stronger leaders? I don't think Chinese preferring Trump over Biden or Clinton is just a matter of seeking self-interest for China. I highly doubt younger people are more likely to believe in national interest than older ones.

At first thought, I theorize maybe they like his personality but there seems to be a similar phenomena in Russia where Putin earns higher support from the youth than from the older ones. I doubt that young Russians like Putin for his personality.

[Asta]

Btw, the election eve poll you cited seems to understate Trump's support from the exit poll (bolded).

https://aapifund.org/program/research-and-tools/

The election eve poll missed Vietnamese' Trump support by whopping 41 points; For Koreans, 33 points; Chinese 11 points. The former two are horrible misses if exit poll is to be believed.

1) Which one is more accurate, the exit poll or election eve poll? I know exit poll is less reliable this year but at the same time, they have bigger sample size.

2) Do you have any theory on why there was such a huge error? Sample size of the election eve poll may be partly to blame here but in Indians and Filipinos case, the margins were actually quite accurate.


Chinese: 72-27-1 (Biden +45) 65-31 (Biden +34)
Filipino: 60-38-2 (Biden +22) 60-38 (Biden +22)
Indian: 70-28-2 (Biden +42)  72-26 (Biden +46)
Japanese: 70-29-1 (Biden +41) unknown
Korean: 71-23-6 (Biden + 48) (57-42 (Biden +15)
Vietnamese: 61-36-3 (Biden +25) 41-57 (Trump +16)
OVERALL: 68-30-2 (Biden +38)

[Asta]

Btw, the election eve poll you cited seems to understate Trump's support from the exit poll (bolded).

https://aapifund.org/program/research-and-tools/

The election eve poll missed Vietnamese' Trump support by whopping 41 points; For Koreans, 33 points; Chinese 11 points. The former two are horrible misses if exit poll is to be believed.

1) Which one is more accurate, the exit poll or election eve poll? I know exit poll is less reliable this year but at the same time, they have bigger sample size.

2) Do you have any theory on why there was such a huge error? Sample size of the election eve poll may be partly to blame here but in Indians and Filipinos case, the margins were actually quite accurate.


Chinese: 72-27-1 (Biden +45) 65-31 (Biden +34)
Filipino: 60-38-2 (Biden +22) 60-38 (Biden +22)
Indian: 70-28-2 (Biden +42)  72-26 (Biden +46)
Japanese: 70-29-1 (Biden +41) unknown
Korean: 71-23-6 (Biden + 48) (57-42 (Biden +15)
Vietnamese: 61-36-3 (Biden +25) 41-57 (Trump +16)
OVERALL: 68-30-2 (Biden +38)

To be honest, I don't entirely trust either poll. I don't think the AALDEF poll is representative of all Asians because they only focused on 13 states + DC. And I'm not sure if the Election Eve poll accounted for Election Day voters. I don't remember if either poll weighed the relative proportions of different Asian subgroups according to CVAP. The AAPI Data Sept 2020 survey definitely did not.

13 states shouldn't distort the results too much, because there aren't a whole lot of Asians in unpopulated states. While I am tempted to say that the exit poll is probably far more accurate, exit poll could be disproportionately geared toward Asians that don't speak English proficiently in an attempt to represent more of older Asian voters.

There is a lot more work that needs to be done since Asian voters are disproportionately in bigger states like CA, NY, NJ, TX etc. Drawing roughly same number of voters from each state is going to give a more Trump-friendly result since NY and CA Asians are a lot more liberal than GA Asians.