It’s no secret that the GOP’s political weakness among minority voters is pervasive. But as Jamelle Bouie points out today at TAP, it’s not particularly well known that Republicans are actually doing better in one rapidly growing demographic–Latinos–than in another–Asian-Americans:
A whopping 73 percent of Asians supported Barack Obama in the 2012 presidential election, up 11 percent from four years ago [and two points higher than his margin among Latinos]. When you disaggregate by nationality, the difference between Asian support for Obama and Romney is even more stark and begins to approach African American-levels of support for the president.
Just as Republican strength among Cuban-Americans helps offset overwhelming Democratic margins among other Latinos, Vietnamese-Americans (and to a far lesser extent, Filipino-Americans) obscure the rather massive tilt of other categories of Asian-Americans towards the Democratic Party: Obama won over 80% among Americans with Chinese, Indian, Pakistani and Bangledeshi backgrounds. As Bouie concludes:
Simply put, the Republican Party has an “Asian problem” that rivals their “Latino problem” in size and scope. So far, it’s gone under the radar. But given the pace of Asian immigration to the United States—and the growing Asian populations of states like Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia—Republicans can’t ignore it for long.
