At my son’s San Francisco school downtown, homeless tents are steps from the entrance. Drug users sometimes lie prone on the sidewalk outside, as students pick their way around them to get to their parents. The situation hasn’t changed in over two years. As an Asian American, I’ve lost confidence in the current San Francisco city government, and so have many other San Francisco Asian
American voters: of Asian Americans polled disapprove of
Democratic Mayor
London Breed’s
Job performance. Meanwhile, Chinese
immigrant membership in San Francisco’s
Republican Party has since 2019. This is not a coincidence, nor is it unique to San Francisco: In
New York City’s 2022 governor’s
election, majority-Asian precincts shifted to the right by , compared to 2018. Nationally, Asian Americans have been moving towards
Republicans since 2016, with to , and for the House of Representatives
elections in 2022. Those national averages disguise even larger Asian American support for Republicans in certain states: in 2020, of Asian Americans in Californiaand . In recent polls, 67 percent of AAPI adults of President Biden’s handling of inflation, while view his government as doing a of registered Asian Americans view inflation as the most important issue in one survey, although health care, the
economy, crime and education are other . Many worry about crime, amid unprovoked attacks such as an alleged of a 71-year-old Cantonese-speaking woman in San Francisco by a woman who previously pushed a 63-year-old Chinese immigrant to her death. More than half of New York City-based Asian Americans experiencing race-related hate within the last 12 months, and in the same survey said public safety is a major concern. Education is also critical, but Democrat leaders and liberal institutions have failed many Asian American families. San Francisco’s school board kept schools closed during the pandemic, instead renaming them and , prompting Asian American groups to organize and . At the national level, Harvard, other elite universities, and Biden himself deplored the Supreme Court’s ruling prohibiting the use of race in college admissions, in spite of against Asian American applicants. Among the most highly academically qualified applicants, Harvard admitted only 12.7 percent of Asian American applicants, compared to , over four times as many. The difference was even starker for applicants in the third highest rung, where only of similarly qualified African Americans. Asian American applicants were the only demographic group with a negative coefficient, such that being Asian is (-.37), while African American applicants enjoyed a positive coefficient of 2.37. Apparently
Democrats only care about discrimination against minorities if those minorities aren’t Asian students who are “too” successful in school. , but are the nation’s voting bloc. In 2024, about 15 million Asian-Americans are eligible voters, about of all eligible voters, up from about 5 percent in 2020. And Asian American voter turnout is increasing: in 2020, votes cast by Asian Americans compared to 2016, including in : up 84 percent in Georgia, 65 percent in Nevada, and 52 percent in North Carolina. Key swing states went by narrow margins for Biden in 2020. Sixty thousand more Asian Americans voted in Georgia than in 2016, an increase in turnout that exceeded Biden’s narrow margin of victory in the state. But March 2024 polls in all seven swing states Trump leading by one to five percentage points. The Biden administration can point to such as a webpage for reporting anti-Asian hate, improved data collection on Asian Americans to support better analysis and more informed policies, and federal agencies’ expanded language access. Recently, the Biden campaign launched an across the battleground states. But while costs for the Asian-American small business owner in the ad may have gone down, , and supermarket food prices are 25 percent higher in 2024 than in 2020. Asian American voters in 2024 are increasingly engaged in politics given recent inflation, crime and education developments. But their concerns play more to Republican talking point strengths than to what Democrats emphasize. And that could be a problem come November.