Countdown to history: 3 days

On Tuesday, November 4, Americans will elect a new commander in chief to lead a nation with some big problems: a suffering economy, an inefficient health care system, a war, the list can go on and on (especially when compared to other industrialized nations).

Americans have a tough choice to make, but what about the Asian Pacific American community? For such a large, fast growing population, how will this group affect the election?

The National Asian American Survey (NAAS) released data supporting what the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) and other Asian Pacific American (APA) organizations have always known: APAs are a powerful component of the American electorate. They are “sleeping giants” in terms of their population size, their purchasing powers and their opinions.

Despite our growing numbers, the APA community remains invisible to many political wonks. The data about how we vote, who we are, etc. is misleading because these numbers aren’t disaggregated by ethnic subgroup–we’re big and diverse, which poses a problem for researchers.

With the most comprehensive demographic information about Asian Americans, the 2008 Survey is revealing a lot about APAs and their voting habits, also highlighting regional differences within the state of California.

Asian Americans, in general, lean toward Senator Barack Obama (42 percent), but Asian American support for Senator John McCain (24 percent) is highest among Vietnamese Americans (53 percent) and Asian Americans in southern California.

To see more numbers, read the Survey.

The gist?

As of October 15, 2008–a little less than a month before the election–more than one-third of Asian American voters in the Golden State, the state with the largest Asian American population in the country, were undecided about their presidential pick.

The NAAS found surprising and not-so-surprising details about the Asian American vote, but more comprehensive studies like NAAS need to happen to promote public service and civic engagement within the community known as the “sleeping giant.”

–By Leslie K. Tamura, Masaoka Fellow