Asian Americans Increasingly Flex Political Muscle at the Polls

After decades of being perceived as relatively inactive voters, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders are increasingly playing larger roles in elections – a trend that appears also to be true for the 2026 midterms that will lead to sweeping changes in Congressional, state and local representation.

“Asian Americans tended to under-participate compared to the overall population and to white voters and to Black voters in a pretty significant margin,” said Karthick Ramakrishnan, the director and founder of AAPI Data at the University of California at Berkeley. “But that changed in 2018. So if you look at when the Asian American community became activated in a significant way … you saw that starting in 2018.”

While full turnout data for the November midterms won’t be available for some time, Ramakrishnan told Sampan by phone Nov. 13, available data and preelection surveys show that the Asian American vote “was bigger this time than what we saw in 2022 in the states where we have that outcome data.”

So far, the data available show that especially in the South – in states like Georgia, where voter data by race is available already -- significant turnout was seen among Asian, Latino and Black voters, between 2022 and 2026.

“And you saw a decrease in white turnout in 2022 and 2026” in that state, he said.

Just before the midterms, AAPI Data predicted that the nation’s 16 million Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders who were eligible to vote would flex their political muscle in bigger ways than before in the election. In fact, the group, said AAPI Data in a survey released at the end of summer, was ”poised to play an increasingly consequential role in the 2026 midterm elections.”

Not only are AAPIs becoming more politically active after years of voter advocacy initiatives, but the voting age population is growing – to the tune of about 1.6 million newly eligible voters since 2022. The population is also changing in terms of its political positions and party preferences as younger Asian Americans turn 18. Furthermore, these voters are helping shape the outcomes of competitive races and districts in states such as Arizona, California, Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.

Asian American voters in some key battleground states like Nevada -- in the race for governor -- voted for Democrats over Republicans at a two-to-one ratio according to initial estimates, said Ramakrishnan. This trend also appears to have played out among Asian American voters in North Carolina and Georgia, where they voted 62% Democrat to 34% Republican.

“So not only did we see higher turnout this year than in 2022, Asian Americans generally voted for Democrats over Republicans.”

He cautioned, however, that this doesn’t necessarily mean that Republican voters turned to Democratic candidates, but that, potentially, more Republican-leaning voters who were unsatisfied with candidates stayed home while their Democratic-leaning counterparts raced to the polls in larger numbers.

The diverse population has also seen changes to how its subpopulations vote. While Vietnamese Americans used to traditionally lean more Republican decades ago, many now lean Democratic. On the other hand, Filipino Americans are more likely than most other Asian Americans to vote Republican, according to surveys. Anecdotally, it appears the shift in the Vietnamese population is because older voters who came to the U.S. as refugees during and after the Vietnam War are dying off or becoming less active while their children are now becoming more politically active.

“In the past, we’ve seen that those born in the U.S. in the Vietnamese community tend to be more left-leaning than those who came here as refugees. So, that generational shift accounts for a large part of why the Vietnamese American community has, you know, become more liberal over time,” he said.

As for Filipino voters, the trend toward Pres. Donald Trump and toward Republicans in general is likely due to what Ramakrishnan calls the “Duterte Effect,” referring to Rodrigo Duterte, the ousted political strongman who ruled over the Philippines from 2016 to 2022 in authoritarian fashion.

“Most Filipinos arrive in the U.S. as adults with political views based on their socialization in the Philippines. Through parental transmission and primary and secondary education that emphasized Character Education and Good Manners and Right Conduct … Filipinos acquired moral orientations — such as ethos of hard work and discipline, obedience to authority and rule of law, hiya (shame), and commitment to faith — that they carry with them and get reinforced in their new society through their social networks,” wrote Sharon Quinsaat, associate professor of sociology at Grinnell College, in an a pre-midterm post for AAPI Data.

In addition, Quinsaat wrote, many Filipino Americans grew up during the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos and viewed his “iron-fist approach” to crime as good for economy and society.

According to AAPI Data, Filipino Americans and Native Hawaiian Americans were the only two AAPI subgroups to rate Trump with more than a 30% approval rating at 43% and 39%.

As a group, AAPI voters were motivated overall by the same issues that drove others to the polls – the cost of groceries, gas, housing, and healthcare, according to a recent survey led by the African American Research Collaborative and Barreto-Segura Partners Research. The poll included more than 10,000 voters from late October to Nov. 3 who cast ballots in the 2026 midterm elections.

They were also motivated by Trump himself, whom Ramakrishnan said tends to drive people to the polls either to reject him or support him in outsized ways.

The relentless immigration crackdowns that have reportedly ensnared many immigrants and even children with no criminal convictions also motivated many Asian Americans to vote, who according to the African American Research Collaborative/Barreto-Segura poll, placed the issue among their Top 10 concerns. Even though immigration came in around No. 7 on their list of priorities, according to the polling, this doesn’t necessarily mean it wasn’t important. This recent election had so many issues at stake – the economy, inflation, healthcare costs, the war on Iran, and even public health – that many were likely competing for top place, Ramakrishnan suggested.

“The underlying dynamic is, you know, the two signature issues that Trump rode to victory on in 2024 were the economy, particularly the cost of living, and controlling immigration,” said Ramakrishnan. “It turns out that the top issue in 2024 was still the top issue now, which is cost of living. And not only did he not bring it down, inflation persisted because of tariffs and the war in Iran. Those are the two main factors … so that made immigration less of an issue this time around. But, yes, absent the tariffs, absent the Iran war and their effects on inflation, immigration likely would have played a bigger role.”