Analyzing the appeal of Asian American candidates in US elections

Understanding the conditions under which minority candidates are elected to office is important for elevating members of diverse populations to leadership positions in American politics. Lublin and Wright combined several comprehensive, aggregate-level datasets and national opinion surveys that extensively overrepresented minority groups, including the 2016 Pre-Election National Asian American Survey (NAAS), to explore how likely it is that Asian American voters will support Asian American political candidates, and whether these candidates have cross-over appeal to people from different racial and ethnic backgrounds. The 2016 pre-election NAAS survey was meaningful to the analysis, since it included questions about immigrant background, social identities, social attitudes, political and voting behavior, and policy attitudes. Lublin and Wright found that Asian American voters generally prefer to vote for candidates who are from their own or other Asian backgrounds rather than candidates who are non-Asian, indicating solidarity across different Asian cultures. The authors also found that in multi-racial districts, Asian American candidates win at higher rates than Blacks or Latinos, “so growing diversity should benefit their electoral prospects.”