Asian Americans and Voting Participation: Comparing Racial and Ethnic Differences in Recent U.S. Elections

Abstract

This research assesses the significance of race and ethnicity in the participation of Asian Americans in recent U.S. elections. It reviews the major characteristics of the nonwhite, multiethnic population in recent census surveys and discusses the necessity for voting behavior research to address effects of international migration on eligibility issues in voting participation. Results from analyzing U.S. Current Population Survey Voter Supplement files, 1994–2000, indicate that Asian Americans' apparent deficit in voting participation among voting‐age persons can be reduced, removed, or even reversed when restricting analyses only to eligible persons. Multivariate analyses controlling for a set of institutional, contextual, and individual factors show that being Asian and foreign born may have the net effect of increasing voting registration, while being U.S. born and Asian may have the contrary effect, compared to non‐Hispanic whites of comparable background. Nativity is not significant in impacting turnout among registered Asians as a whole, but U.S.‐born Asians are less likely to turn out compared to their white counterparts. Among other findings, being foreign born may enhance the registration likelihood for Chinese, Korean, and Asian Indian American citizens and the turnout likelihood of registered Korean Americans.

Does Social Capital Affect Immigrant Political Participation? Lessons from a Small-N Study of Migrant Political Participation in Rome

“…While the regression coefficients are consistently significant and positive, the strength of the associations estimated here is markedly less pronounced compared to those found in studies of participation by naturalized immigrants (Lien 2004;Brady et al 1995). In the case of voting, these effects diminish when controls for migration-related factors and embeddedness scores are introduced.…”

“…It also asks respondents to report on so-called migration-related factors which have been linked to participation such as language proficiency (Tam Cho 1999;Brady et al 1995;Uhlaner et al 1989), period of stay (de Rooij 2011). In addition, work by Lien (2004) and Bilodeau (2008) suggests that immigrants from countries with political systems similar to Italy should have higher rates of participation compared to others (de Rooij 2011;Lien 2004;Bueker 2005). Similarities in political systems are accounted for in this analysis using their Polity IV scores (Marshall et al 2011).…”

Asian Embeddedness and Political Participation: Social Integration and Asian-American Voting Behavior in the 2000 Presidential Election

“…One reason for this outcome may be because researchers find that the influence of resources, the strongest predictors of voting behavior, are much less consistent for minority racial and ethnic groups (de la Garza 2004;Leighley 2001;Lien 2004). For example, in a study of electoral participation in the 2000 election, limited to five large metropolitan areas with large Asian communities.…”

Get Out on Behalf of Your Group: Electoral Participation of Latinos and Asian Americans

“…While a part of the differential in participation rates across different racial groups can be explained by uneven distribution in resources (Verba et al 1993;Wolfinger and Rosenstone 1980) or varying exposure to mobilization efforts (Rosenstone and Hansen 1993), Latinos and Asian Americans are distinguished from the rest of the electorate in terms of their political opportunities and incentives (e.g., DeSipio 1996). For instance, scholars have found that another set of variables due to their particular status as immigrant-majority and racialminority groups significantly affects their active participation in politics: for instance, length of residence and nativity (Bass and Casper 2001;Lien 2004;Ramakrishnan 2005), English proficiency (Cho 1999), the extent of acculturation (Lien 1994), experiences of discrimination (Schildkraut 2005), group consciousness (Leighley and Vedlitz 1999;Stokes 2003;Uhlaner et al 1989;Wong et al 2005), and religious or non-religious organizational membership (Diaz 1996;Jones-Correa and Leal 2001).…”