Recent works on Asian-Americans find that, while the community is less likely than other racial groups to be politically active, when they are, they are more likely to vote Democrat and identify as Asian-Americans in lieu of their national identity. Consistent across these works, however, is the conceptual omission of Central and North Asians from the grouping of Asian-Americans. Additionally, there is a theoretical assumption that ethnic boundaries are congruent with national boundaries. Finally, across these works there is the methodological dependence on English as the language of survey research.
In the project to be presented, the researchers address these shortcomings by fielding an online survey to Central and North Asian Americans in 13 languages. Preliminary results highlight that respondents of Central and North Asian heritage are substantially less likely to vote Democrat than Asian-Americans from other regions of Asia; ethnicity has a stronger effect than nationality when it comes to vote choice and group identification; and respondents who take the survey in a non-English language are less likely to vote Democrat and to identify as Asian-American. These results call attention to the importance of considering immigrants from Central and North Asia — not just generally in American politics but in Asian-American race and ethnic politics specifically.
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