A few months after the release of a preliminary report, the National Asian American Survey has released its final report on its 2012 post-election survey of Asian American and Pacific Islander voting. Some of the more interesting highlights:
- Although more than Asian Americans voted for Barack Obama, more than 50% remain unaligned to either party.
- Overall outreach by both Democrat and Republican parties was low, with more than two-thirds of AAPIs receiving no outreach at all
- Conducting surveys in Asian Language rather than just in English is critical to understanding AAPI preferences
Some of these results seem to conflict with other surveys, like this one from Gallup saying Asian Americans lean Democratic, which I’ll talk about.
The table below shows outreach to Asian Americans broken down by party and battleground states. While almost half of Asian Americans surveyed from battleground states were contacted by either party or by community organizations, those states include only 17% of those who responded to the survey. Overall, only some 31% received any kind of contact.
One of the key points of the survey is that conducting surveys in Asian Languages is fundamental to understanding AAPI preferences. Here is a survey table that breaks down party affiliation by language in which the survey was conducted:
Notice that results are much different for Asian language vs English interview results, particularly for Democrat. In comparison, the Gallup poll cited above was conducted in English and Spanish. Also “leaning” as used in the Gallup Survey does not necessarily mean permanent party affiliation.
There is other information in the report which you may find interesting. It will definitely be useful to both parties and Republicans in particular as they look to reach more Asian American voters. This survey and report was a collaboration between the National Asian American Survey, the Asian American Justice Center, and APIAVote.
