Asian American Political Strategy: Mobilizing Pan-Asian and Multi-Ethnic Coalitions

Abstract

Asian American political influence is increasing in tandem with the ethnocracial group’s rapidly growing share of the U.S. population. We have seen, and can expect to continue to see, an increase in Asian Americans holding office. Thus, understanding the campaign strategy of Asian American political candidates will become increasingly pertinent to the study of electoral politics in the coming years. I uncover the types of identity appeals that Asian American politicians and political candidates make on the campaign trail and the electoral implications of such appeals. To do so, I conduct two separate analyses. In Part 1, I describe the qualitative findings from 15 interviews with political consultants and Asian American politicians on how they navigate and leverage their race when fundraising and campaigning. This qualitative portion of my research sheds light on how Asian American candidates balance competing priorities in various fundraising and campaign contexts and what specific racialization and deracialization strategies they employ. For Part 2, I conduct a controlled survey experiment analyzing how varying racialized policy priorities of Asian American political candidates affect the voting behavior of Asian, Latino, Black, and White respondents, which allows me to assess the efficacy of racialization strategies by Asian American political candidates. I find that Asian Americans are significantly more likely to express support for a pan-ethnic candidate when Asian ethnopolitical issues are made salient than when they are not. However, when the Asian American candidate makes ethnopolitical issues salient for Latino and Black populations, they do not display a particularly strong tendency to vote for the Asian American candidate, calling into question the ability for Asian American politicians to mobilize cross-ethnic coalitions through targeted racialization strategies.