77% of the Growing Asian-American Community voted for Obama in 2012 Elections!

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An interesting and one-of-a-kind study done on the involvement of the Asian-Americans in the elections throws up some interesting insights. The study was done by Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF). It did a nonpartisan multilingual exit poll of 9,096 Asian American voters in the November 2012 Presidential Elections. The poll was done in 37 cities across 14 states on Election Day: New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maryland, Michigan, Illinois, Georgia, Louisiana, Florida, Texas, Nevada, California, and Washington, D.C.

Although the Asian Americans are diverse in their political beliefs and geography – India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Vietnam, China, Koreas, Japan, Indonesia etc – still 77% of all Asian Americans voted for Barack Obama. With Hispanics and African Americans firmly in the democratic camp, Asian Americans also seem to be going that route as well. In fact far more than the Hispanics and the African Americans!

The ethnicity mix polled was Chinese (31%), Asian Indian (13%), Bangladeshi (12%), Vietnamese (12%), Korean (11%), Filipino (9%), Pakistani (3%), Arab (2%), Indo-Caribbean (1%), and Cambodian (1%).

People who voted for Obama in different countries is like this.

What is interesting is that the Islamic countries seem to be voting for Obama in large numbers. Now, ironically, Pakistan is the worst sufferer of the drone policy of Obama and I have seen Pakistanis cribbing about how US under Obama has become more anti-Pakistan, yet they seem to be backing him up pretty solidly!

You can get more information about the poll here, but some of the key insights that the poll came out with apart from support for Obama were:

Asian Americans under 40 were more likely to have favored Obama
Asian Americans are a growing segment of the electorate, with a large proportion of first-time voters and foreign-born naturalized U.S. citizens
Almost two-thirds of Asian Americans favored comprehensive immigration reform, with a range of support by ethnic group
Language assistance and bilingual ballots are needed to preserve access to the vote
Among Asian Americans overall, voting in the Congressional Elections mirrored the Presidential Elections