Poll: AAPI voters swinging towards Biden and Democrats

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Kamala Harris, left, and Joe Biden campaign in the era of COVID-19.

Even before Joe Biden picked Sen. Kamala Harris to be his vice president, Asian Americans were flocking to the Democratic Party because of the Trump administration's policies. Selecting the California senator, an Indian American, may have sealed up the Asian American vote for 2020.

A poll taken before Biden's choice and before the Democratic National Convention shows that registered Asian Americans lean heavily towards supporting Biden in 2020,

"I think even before the Harris pick, Asian Americans were probably going to be on track for record increases in voter turnout," CBS News quoted Karthick Ramakrishnan, professor of public policy and political science at the University of California, Riverside, and director of the National Asian American Survey.

"I think the Harris nomination will very likely increase turnout in the Asian American population, and particularly among young Asian-Americans and even more so Indian-Americans," Ramakrishnan said.

Early polling with Asian American registered voters shows that registered Asian Americans lean heavily towards supporting Democratic candidate Joe Biden in 2020, although about 1 in 6 are still persuadable.  

After Biden announced Harris as his running mate, NBC reported that Amit Jani, the campaign’s national director for Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) outreach, said he saw an immediate surge of enthusiasm on social media and message boards and received calls from Asian Americans seeking to get more involved.

“Within the South Asian and Indian communities, there’s a level of excitement I haven’t seen before,” Jani told NBC.

In the later half of the 20th century, AAPI voters were divided with Vietnamese and Filipinos voting more conservatively than Democrat-leaning voters in the Chinese, Japanese and Indian American communities.

The 2008 presidential election saw a definite shift towards the Democrats and then-nominee Barack Obama. 

Also, the large number of immigrants from Asia began becoming US citizens didn't like the anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies being introduced by Trump. Happening at the same time was that young AAPI became old enough to vote and younger voters tended to vote more liberal.

As a daughter of immigrant parents -- her mother is from India and father is from Jamaica -- Asian Americans of all ethnicities could relate to her because , two-thirds of the AAPI population are first-generation immigrants.

Nationwide, AAPI voters constitute only 6% of the voters, however their concentrations in key districts could determine election results in battleground states such as Arizona, Florida, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Texas.