The GOP narrowed the gap among AAPI voters in 2024. What does this mean for the upcoming election?

Conservatives have made inroads among Asian-American and Pacific Islander voters in the 2024 election, but some political experts who work closely with the community say there is still uncertainty about how the growing electoral bloc will cast its ballots in the future.

A national NBC exit poll showed a majority of Asian-American voters chose Harris, but showed Trump gaining 5 points in the electoral bloc in the 2020 election.

Karthick Ramakrishnan, Executive Director of AAPI datasaid some early data in 2024 suggested the electorate was swinging to the center.

Ramakrishnan, whose organization tracks the demographic and political characteristics of the Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander communities, said the last three presidential elections show that Asian voters are a confident voting population, he said.

A significant portion of the Asian-American electorate consists of naturalized citizens who did not grow up in a Republican or Democratic household, Ramakrishnan said. In addition, many in the electoral bloc are first- or second-time voters.

“Their party identification is weaker and they are more convinced,” he said. “They’re less set in their ways about how they’re going to vote — the party has a weaker effect.”

Lily Trieu, executive director of Asian Texans for Justice, was not surprised by the election results. Before the 2024 elections, the organization published three reports profiling Asian American voters in Texas.

“Even in the weeks and months leading up to the election, we saw in our research that Asian Americans were concerned about the economy and the cost of living,” she said.

She said early voting data showed similar turnout rates among Asian Americans in Texas. Considering the growing population, Trieu said she was impressed by the comparable turnout in the community.

Both political parties have made efforts to reach Asian-American voters, Trieu said, adding that she believes outreach should go further than political signs and television ads.

“We know that in the last two cycles, Asian voters have moved to the left, and now we know, after the last election, that they have moved to the right,” Trieu said. “AAPIs are not loyal to any party, which means our votes are there to be courted.”

Some national exit poll data suggest that Republican support among Asian-American and Pacific Islander voters in Texas is stronger than in other parts of the country.

Data on how the Texas electorate voted is scarce, but a Washington Post The exit poll showed that 55 percent of Asian voters in Texas voted for President-elect Donald Trump, while 42 percent voted for Vice President Kamala Harris.

Historically, Asian-American voters in red states have been split down the middle on how they vote, Ramakrishnan said.

“I would expect the Asian-American vote in Texas to be closer to fifty-fifty than nationally,” he said.

The 2024 poll of the American electorateconducted by experts from Barreto-Segura Partners Research, the African American Research Collaborative and Harvard University, also showed a shift toward Republicans among voters in Asian American and Pacific Islander communities across the country.

The poll surveyed black, Hispanic, Native American, and white voters, and the sample pool of respondents was representative of each state’s demographics.

Among Asian and Pacific Islander Americans polled in Texas, 48 ​​percent said they supported Harris, and 46 percent said they supported Trump, according to the American Voter Poll. Nationally, 61 percent of AAPI respondents said they voted for Harris, while 35 percent said they voted for Trump.

“It’s not too different from what we’ve seen for survey data that have collected data in Texas among Asians and Pacific Islanders in the past, where the AAPI community in Texas is more Republican-leaning than the AAPI community in the rest of the country,” the professor said of Harvard, Taeku Lee, a principal surveyor of the project.

Texas is “more Republican” than other states that have large concentrations of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, Lee said.

Another reason for the tighter margin in Texas could be related to a higher concentration of Asian-American populations in the state compared to other parts of the country.

Political party affiliation varied among different segments of the Asian American community.

Vietnamese voters, for example, have historically leaned Republican, Lee said. Texas has the second-highest concentration of Vietnamese Americans — 324,854 — in the country, after California, according to AAPI Data.

Although some data shows the trend is changing nationally, Vietnamese voters in Texas still vote “pretty heavily Republican,” Lee said.

From 2022 to 2023, Collin County had the largest increase in the Asian population in the country, with people of South Asian descent accounting for a significant portion of the increase.

Leaders of North Texas organizations that work closely with South Asian Americans on both sides of the political spectrum said The Dallas Morning News the health of the economy was highlighted as a major determining factor for voters in their communities. They said they both see increased political participation in their circles.

Sanjay Narayan, a board member of the Asian Republican Assembly of Texas, said the surge in support for Trump among Asian and Hispanic voters was a “resounding victory.” He said the economy, the southern border and international conflicts were most important to the South Asian voters he interacted with.

“At the end of the day, people came to this country to embrace the values ​​of freedom, free speech and due process that we all share,” Narayan said. “This is not unique to race.”

Narayan said he believes the South Asian community in North Texas votes Democratic, but added that he has seen a growing number of South Asian voters openly support Trump and the Republican Party.

“It’s all a matter (of) margins and directions,” Narayan said. “I think it’s definitely gotten less blue this cycle.”

Political signs in support of the Republican Party in various languages ​​spoken in India, including Tamil and Telugu, have been seen in parts of Collin County ahead of the 2024 election.

Narayan said the signs point to growing political activism among right-leaning South Asian voters.

“It will be a test, to be honest with you, whether this is a concerted effort and whether it will be sustained, but I hope it will be,” he said.

Chanda Parbhoo, founder of SAAVETX, a left-wing organization, also noted a small shift in Asian voters to the Republican Party compared to the previous two presidential elections.

She, like Narayan, said concerns about the economy and the southern border appear to be major factors behind South Asian voters voting Republican in 2024. She, however, believes misinformation has played a role in the vote of some South Asian Americans for Trump.

In August, Chinese for Affirmative Action reported that between June 2023 and June 2024, the civil rights organization found more than 600 pieces of misinformation broadcast through social media platforms popular among Chinese-speaking communities.

Parbhoo said he has similarly heard some in the South Asian community following and sharing false narratives, particularly about the southern border.

“I think the simple talking points really stuck with the larger South Asian community,” Parbhoo said.

Despite the loss of Harris, Parbhoo said her organization saw an increase in volunteers after the 2024 election.

“I think they continue to see people elected who don’t have the community’s best interest at heart, so we’re seeing another wave of people looking to get involved so it doesn’t happen again,” Parbhoo said.