The 45th Congressional District in California, which spans Orange and Los Angeles counties, serves as the best conceivable example of the diversity and influence of Asian American voters.
In the race for a House seat, Democratic candidate Jay Chen is facing off against Republican incumbent Michelle Steel. Both candidates are Asian Americans. Additionally, a third of the district’s electorate, or Asian American votes, will be crucial in determining the outcome of the fiercely contested race.
“This race, in my opinion, best represents the diversity of the Asian American community. You’re seeing a Korean immigrant incumbent, who is a Republican, being challenged by a Taiwanese American Democrat, and her strategy is to incite anti-Chinese sentiment by running for office in the Vietnamese immigrant community,” Connie Chung Joe, the CEO of Asian Americans Advancing Justice – Los Angeles, said to AWN in response to criticisms that Steel is attempting to capitalise on concerns about China’s influence in the region by referring to Chen as “China’s “And you can see that the district has a significant Asian American population.”
The contest is expected to accomplish two goals, according to experts: highlight the reality that Asian American voters are not a homogenous group and highlight the value of spending money on campaign outreach to a growing voting force.
I think of this race as a kind of wake-up call to the size and significance of the API community, Joe added. “Asian Americans are the fastest-growing racial group in this nation, and they exercise their right to vote. Georgia demonstrated to us in the 2020 election how crucial these people may be in making a difference. Today, we are once more witnessing that.
Asian Americans recently became a significant voting force, aiding in the election of Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock to the US Senate as well as Joe Biden to the White House.
Some of Joe’s points were reiterated by Karthick Ramakrishnan, founder and director of the nonprofit organisation AAPI Data and professor of political science and public policy at the University of California, Riverside.
Even if the Asian American vote is not very significant, it can still have an impact, he said. “That story includes this area of California.”
What are the 45th District’s racial and ethnic makeup?
The diversity of the 45th District cannot be emphasised enough.
The district was recently redrew by an independent panel to provide individuals of Indian, Vietnamese, Korean, and Chinese ancestry more voting power and to keep them together.
Sara Sadhwani, an assistant professor of politics at Pomona College and a senior researcher at AAPI Data, told AWN that this area connects the Little Saigon Vietnamese population with Little India. The area also boasts a significant population of Chinese and Korean Americans in addition to those two historic neighbourhoods.
Additionally noticeable is the district’s political variety.
According to Pew Research Center data, Asian Americans broadly agree on subjects including education, violent crime, and healthcare. But when we move away from popular opinion and toward party identity, there are noticeable disparities, just as there are with every group.
According to Ramakrishnan, “you discover that most Asian Americans lean Democratic, but the strength of that lean differs by national origin, by age, or by immigrant generation.”
According to a Pew poll conducted in August, 57% of English-speaking Asian registered voters said that they would probably support the Democratic candidate in the district’s House contest, while only 26% indicated that they would support the Republican candidate.
Indian Americans are the Asian American voting bloc with the most Democratic leanings, according to AAPI Data. While people from other Asian ethnicities or heritage tend to lean more Democratic, Vietnamese Americans tend to lean Republican. (It should be noted that in 2020, former President Donald Trump appeared to make marginal gains with certain Asian Americans.)
Joe provided a more vivid description of this variance despite the sparse data.
She said that generally speaking, Asian Americans lean slightly more Democratic than Republican. “However, when you look at the subgroups, you discover that, for example, the elder generation of Vietnamese immigrants tends to lean heavily Republican. And that holds true for a few other groups as well. Older immigrants from Korea tend to lean Republican. However, younger Asian Americans tend to support the Democratic Party and progressive causes.
Steel seems to be attempting to take advantage of some of these distinctions. Her campaign issued mailers earlier this year to Vietnamese Americans in Orange County portraying Chen as a communist educator.
There is a genuine belief that communism should not spread here, especially among the first generation of Vietnamese Americans who fled Vietnam and brought with them feelings of persecution, according to Sadhwani. Every time you mention communism, it attracts attention and increases some voters’ concern of the potential politics of a Democrat.
She continued, “It’s intriguing to watch the conflict between a Korean American and a Taiwanese American in the aforementioned neighbourhoods.”
No matter who wins, Sadhwani asserted, “We’re obviously talking about a form of ethnic representation for the district.”
