Analysis: Who do California's Asian Amerian voters support?

Super Tuesday is upon us and Asian American voters are ready to cast their ballots. There are over 4 million eligible AAPI voters in the Golden State, which has 415 delegates up for grabs.

The Democratic field of candidates has narrowed dramatically after the South Carolina primary. With Joe Biden's overwhelming victory in South Carolina, Tom Steyer, Pete Buttigeig and Amy Klobuchar have dropped out of the race for the Democratic nomination to run against Donald Trump.

Fivethirtyeight.com says, "In California, which votes on Super Tuesday, Asian Americans make up 16 percent of the population, the largest percentage of any state except Hawaii. The state’s Asian American voters account for 12 percent of likely voters who are registered Democrats, according to the Public Policy Institute of California, which released a study of California voters last August. And that same research showed that 36 percent of Asian American likely voters in California are independents, compared to 43 percent who are Democrats, which means that if independents choose to cast a Democratic ballot, Asian Americans’ share of the primary electorate could be even higher."

The latest polls taken before the South Carolina primary shows Sanders favored in California, but momentum is in Biden's favor after his big win in South Carolina, drawing the overwhelming support of African Americans and moderate white voters.

Heading into Super Tuesday (but, before South Carolina), fivethirtyeight.com has four recent California polls with crosstab information on who Asian American voters are leaning toward voting for, and Sanders seems to have an edge, earning the most support in three of the four surveys the website looked at. Sen. Elizabeth Warren and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg also did well across the board.

“I’m not sure how much that matters,” says Rep. Ro Khanna, the Indian American congressmember representing Silicon Valley, and Sanders' campaign co-chair. He adds, “I mean, (Biden’s) a formidable competitor, we’re treating him as such and we’re very confident we’re going to do well in a lot of Super Tuesday states. We think this is going to be a fight until the convention."

The chart below provided by fivethirtyeight was compiled before the outcome of the South Carolina Primary.

Sanders, whose campaign manager, Faiz Shakir, is Muslim American, was one of two Democratic candidates to attend the Islamic Society of North America’s annual conference in Houston over Labor Day weekend last year, an event that drew some 30,000 Muslims from all over the country.

Sanders has received endorsements from prominent Muslim American figures: Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, the first Muslim American women elected to Congress; and even millennial influencers like Hoda Katebi, a popular fashion writer, cultural critic, and political activist. A few weeks before Super Tuesday, Emgage PAC, which calls itself the biggest Muslim political action committee in the country, endorsed Sanders as well, according to Politico.

Biden, for his part, appears ready to give Sanders the Golden State and instead is focusing on states with large African American populations -- Virginia, Alabama, North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas. The Biden campaign has spent zero dollars on California TV ads, and a teeny, tiny, almost negligible amount ($4,000) on digital.

Biden also received and early endorsement of the AAPI Victory Fund, one of the more active AAPI political action committees.

One of the most visible Asian American surrogates for Biden is Olympic skater Michelle Kwan, a native Californian, but she has been absent from the Golden State in the runup to Super Tuesday.

Warren and her campaign manager Roger Lau first began talking about the importance of AAPI representation in government back when he was tapped for Warren’s Massachusett's senatorial campaign in 2011. They have been very deliberate in including more than 100 AAPI staffers throughout the campaign, including Mary Lou Akai-Ferguson, the national AAPI community engagement and organizing director for Warren for President who has led the campaign’s grassroots outreach efforts.

However the Warren campaign compiled an impressive list of AAPI celebrities and community leaders endorsing the Massachusetts senator, including such luminaries such as actress Constance Wu, authors Celeste Ng and Gina Apostol, CNN pundit Jeff Yang, former Reddit CEO Ellen Pao and prominent psychology professor Kevin Nadal. 

Warren "has called for more support for legal immigration, including redistributing unused visas to address the millions of backlogged individuals currently waiting for a way to enter the United States, as well as lower barriers to naturalization for green card holders — over a third of whom are Asian, who make up the largest group of naturalized citizens in the United States. She has declared that she will not just extend DACA, but provide a path to citizenship for DREAMers — and their families; about one in 10 DACA-eligible individuals in the U.S. are Asian,” the group noted.

To counter this list, the Sanders campaign compiled their own list of endorsements from prominent AAPI celebrities and leaders.

Is it Tulsi Gabbard's last hurrah?

Notice that Hawaii's Rep. Tulsi Gabbard is not even included in fivethirtyeight's calculations because she has done so poorly in the four early primaries and caucuses. 

In California, a candidate must win 15% of the votes in order to earn any of the delegates. It is unlikely that Gabbard will reach that threshold except for her appeal for the state's large Hawaiian, Samoan American and Hindu American subgroups.

Another candidate that shouldn't be discounted is former NY Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has spend a fortune in television, print and online advertising in California and Texas and other Super Tuesday states. It has been his campaign's strategy from the moment he announced his candidacy to ignore the first four contests and concentrate his considerable treasure chest on Super Tuesday. We'll see if this unusual strategy works for the billionaire.

With Californians Sen. Kamala Harris and tech billionaire Tom Steyer out of the race, along with Asian American Andrew Yang, the state's AAPI voters may go with the candidate who has put the most effort in winning their vote -- respect and reverence being important in most AAPI cultures. That would be Sen. Warren, who like Sanders propose a progressive agenda but hasn't been as strident nor did she have the well-established organization that Sanders never disbanded after his 2016 run against Hillary Clinton.

The big question is with moderates Steyer, Buttigeig and Klobuchar out of the race, where will their supporters go? And for the voters who opted to cast their votes early, if they didn't vote for the remaining candidates, their votes will amount to zero.

Will Michael Bloomberg's advertising campaign work?

“We are fighting this delegate by delegate,” said Roger Lau, Elizabeth Warren's campaign manager and the first AAPI to head a national political campaign. Although only has won eight delegates after South Carolina's Primary Saturday. Warren has a record of being able to win even in races where she initially trailed, Roger Lau adds. “I’m confident that we’re going to continue fighting all the way through until the convention.”


Two weeks ago, Warren put forth her “Working Agenda for Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders,” and like Sanders, has invested heavily in multi-lingual campaign materials.


Besides, California and Texas, the other states voting Tuesday include Warren's home state of Massachusetts, Virginia, Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Maine, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah, American Samoa, and Sander's home state of Vermont. Altogether these states and territory represent a third of the total Democratic delegates.

AAPI voters could play key roles in Texas where several AAPI candidates -- Filipino American Gina Ortiz Jones in the 23rd and Indian American Sri Preston Kulkarni in the 22nd -- running for Congress could spur  more AAPI voters to show up at the polls. The largest AAPI ethnic groups in Texas include: Indian (340,000), Vietnamese (258,000), Chinese (211,000), Filipino (170,000), Korean (101,000), and Pakistani (66,000), according to AAPI Data. AAPI voters make up about 5% of the electorate.

In Texas, Asian Americans are the fastest-growing demographic, according to the US Census. The Asian American community has grown by 42% since 2010. Evidence of the growing presence of AAPI communities -- every major city in Texas now hosts Lunar New Year celebrations and the "Howdy Modi" rally welcoming India's Prime MInister last year drew 50,000 Indian Americans to Houston.

In a Public Policy Polling survey of likely Texas Democratic primary voters released this week, 32% of Asian Americans supported Sanders, 29% supported Bloomberg, 20% supported Buttigieg and 9% supported Biden. But this poll was also taken before Biden's convincing win in South Carolina and before Buttigieg dropped out. 

On Sunday, both Buttigieg and Klobuchar gave ringing endorsements to Biden. We can assume that many of Buttigieg's and Klobuchar's moderate supporters in Texas and California would switch their preference to Biden or Bloomberg.

The Hmong American community, which has been politically active in Minnesota in the Twin Cities region and supporters of Minnesota Sen. Klobuchar, will likely take her endorsement seriously and vote for the moderate Biden.

Other states where AAPI could make a difference include Virginia and Colorado, representing 5.3% and 3% of the voters, respectively, according to AAPI Data.

Super Tuesday could be the make-or-break moment for several of the candidates and the moment the AAPI voters could help determine the outcome of the Democratic race for President.

Updated March 3, 9:30 a.m. for clarity.

Pew Report: Most immigrant voters are from Mexico and Asia

ANALYSIS

Immigrant voters, who make up 21% of California's eligible voters could swing the Primary election on Super Tuesday.
Of this group, voters from Mexico and the Philippines make up the bulk of the foreign-born electorate, according to a new study by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center.

The Pew report, released Wednesday (Feb. 26), says that nationally, Mexico, the Philippines, India, China, Vietnam, Cuba, Korea, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica and El Salvador, in descending order, make up the top ten origin countries of the immigrant electorate.

In fact, most eligible immigrant voters, as can be surmised from Pew's data, are from either Mexico or  Asia.

Taking the top ten countries as a sample, Latin American and Caribbean countries provide 5.9% of all immigrant voters. But the surprise is that immigrant voters from Asian countries, make up 5.3% of the total, a fact that most mainstream media and pollsters seem to overlook when reporting sample surveys that are usually broken down to only white, black and Hispanic.

Immigrant eligible voters born in Mexico account for 16% of all foreign-born eligible voters, far below their 25% share among all immigrants. By contrast, immigrant Filipino eligible voters make up 6% of foreign-born eligible voters even though they account for onl 4% of all U.S. immigrants. The disparity suggests that Filipinos become naturalized citizens at a faster rate than immigrants from Mexico.

Immigrant voters will play a critical role when Californians cast their ballots on Super Tuesday, March 3. Out of California’s 25.9 million eligible voters, 21% (5.5 million) are foreign born, the highest share of any state through Super Tuesday and in the nation, reports Pew.

At stake is California's 416 delegates, the largest number in the nation and the grand prize for the Democratic candidate who is paying attention to the state's demographics. The state's first-generation electorate could seal a Bernie Sanders nomination or it could give hope to any of Sanders' rivals.]

As of Wednesday evening, according to FiveThirtyEight, Sanders has a commanding lead in California with 30.2% of voters favoring her. 

The real contest, it appears, is for second place. Elizabeth Warren's strong performance in the last two debates has placed her in a virtual tie  with 13.2%  vs. Joe Biden's 13.1%. 

Mike Bloomberg, who has had the state for himself with a barrage of media since January, but all that spending has earned him 11.4%; followed by Pete Buttigeig, 9.5%; Amy Klobuchar, 4.8%; Tom Steyer, the lone Californian, 3.1%; and Tulsi Gabbard, 2%

Nationally, first-generation immigrants make up about 10% of eligible voters, or more than 23 million eligible voters, a record high according to Pew.

On and before Super Tuesday, California along with Texas (1.8 million immigrant eligible voters), Massachusetts (619,000), Virginia (550,000), North Carolina (307,000) and Nevada (293,000) four-in-ten of the nation’s immigrant eligible voters will have cast their primary ballots or expressed their caucus preference. 

Considering the critical role immigrant voters -- or first-generation US citizens -- will play on Super Tuesday and during the rest of the primary season, immigration issues have barely been mentioned in the ten debates held so far among Democratic candidates.

As first-generation Americans, their ties with their country of origin are still strong and many are likely petitioning for more family members to immigrate to the US but Donald Trump immigration policies seem to thwart or lessen the importance of family reunification, the basis of US immigration policy since 1965.

One of the other avenues for possibly becoming US citizens is through the special visas for refugees and students who can change their status while in the US. Again, the Trump administration seems to be placing more and more hurdles for applications from these groups.

Preferred workers with H-1B visas who work in professions in which the US lacks workers such in the medical field or high tech industries find the waiting lines longer and longer as the Trump administration cut down the number of visas issued.

Although separate candidates have explained their positions on immigration on their websites, the debates seem to be a major source of information for many voters. Yet moderators -- most of whom are based in the East Coast -- in the 10 debates have seemed to not realize the importance of the topic of immigration for this group of voters, who will help choose the Democratic nominee to run against the incumbent resident of the White House.

Immigration has been a flashpoint between Democrats and Donald Trump’s administration since the moment he took office and declared a Muslim Ban and it will likely be the centerpiece of his presidential campaign to fire up the xenophobic tendencies of his base and to attract as many racists and white supremacists he can get.

Democrats can counter Trump's supporters' zeal by paying attention to the immigrant voters' concerns about family reunification, deportation, the separation of babies from their parents and bans or limitations on travel from certain countries.

Pew's findings may be surprising, or even impressive, but they will mean nothing if this segment of voters don't bother to vote because r they feel there is no difference between Trump and the Democrats or if they feel their concerns are being ignored.

CORRECTION: Feb. 27, 10 a.m. Earlier versions of this blog had an incorrect number of delegates for California.