Asian Americans will grow to nearly 12 percent of the U.S. population by 2060 — from today’s 6.3 percent — as the country’s non-Hispanic white population dips to less than 44 percent, according to projections by the U.S. Census Bureau.
Immigrants from Asia, mostly from India and China, are arriving at a brisker pace than those from Latin America, propelling Asian Americans as the country’s fastest-growing ethnic group, according to Pew.
That rising population translates to a potential treasure trove of voters.
“We’re the rising new electorate,” said Christine Chen, the executive director of the Asian and Pacific Islander American Vote, a nonpartisan group that works to increase electoral and civic engagement nationwide. “Hopefully, it means they can no longer take us for granted.”
She hopes that elected officials will more aggressively address issues near and dear to Asian Americans, including help with fulfilling the American dream of homeownership, paying for college and reuniting families faster by reducing current delays due to limits and backlogs in immigration visas.
Already, AAPI voters in seven states — Alaska, California, Hawaii, Nevada, New Jersey, New York and Washington — account for at least 5 percent of the voting-eligible population, according to Nonprofit Vote, a Boston-based voter advocacy group.
Among those states, only Nevada is expected to be a swing state in 2016 — although Asian Americans have the potential for flexing political muscle in battleground states like Virginia, Florida, Colorado, North Carolina and Ohio.
In 2012, Obama won Florida by less than 1 percentage point, a margin that AAPI groups say could have been delivered by Asian American voters. Similarly, Obama’s margin of victory in Virginia was less than 3 percentage points, a margin also covered by Asian American voters.
In a postmortem of its disappointing performance in 2012, the GOP vowed to expand its tent by broadening outreach to communities of color, particularly Latinos and Asian Americans.
Republican operatives conceded that the party needed to work harder in showing how the party’s platform aligns with the values of many Asian Americans.
It means courting votes in communities that may be apprehensive about being visible at community events and reaching out to ethnic media to reach immigrants with limited proficiency in English.
“We go to where our people are, but we also go to where we have to win,” said Jason Chung, who leads the Republican National Committee’s drive to pull more Asian Americans into the GOP fold.
Part of the effort is to chip away at the Democratic base. Last week the committee released an online ad chasing after Asian American millennials.
By some accounts, Republicans have made inroads.
In last year’s U.S. Senate race in Virginia, Democratic incumbent Mark Warner was expected to handily prevail over Republican Ed Gillespie, but it turned out to be a tight race. Warner won by just eight-tenths of 1 percentage point. According to some exit polls, they evenly split the Asian American vote. Gillespie’s performance stirred hope that a Republican message could resonate with communities of color.
However, those advances may have been recently slowed by some of the party’s highest-profile candidates for president.
Jeb Bush tried to quell one firestorm on the immigration issue but instead triggered another when explaining his use of the term “anchor babies” to describe children of undocumented immigrants born in the U.S.
The furor was immediate among Latinos and was widened when he explained that the issue wasn’t about Latinos but “more related to Asian people coming into our country having children.”
When Bush made his comments, it was K.J. Bagchi’s first day on the job as the Democratic National Committee’s director of Asian American and Pacific Islander engagement. “It was jarring,” he recalled.
Carly Fiorina later chimed in, calling maternity tourism by Chinese women a “festering problem.”
While mocking Bush for his “anchor babies” comment, GOP front-runner Donald Trump might have alienated some Asian Americans when he used broken English to describe the cultural differences in how Asians negotiate business deals.
“The Republican candidates are making it easy,” said Bagchi, a former aide to Democratic Rep. Mike Honda of California.
“We understand the power of the AAPI voting bloc,” Bagchi said. “Do we have to make sure that we don’t take the AAPI vote for granted? Of course.”
But with a year to go before the 2016 elections, much of the political landscape remains unsettled.
Until then, both sides are laying the infrastructure that will mobilize the grass roots when it is time.
But Wolf, the town councilor from Herndon, offered some advice about wooing Asian American voters: Don’t wait.
“You have to be really proactive about reaching out,” she said. “And you have to be patient. It’s a community and electorate that is slow to warm up to people.”
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