‘Asian Americans leaving the Democrat Party will be a key reason the GOP will take back the House and Senate.’
Support for Joe Biden among Asian Americans plummeted within the last year by nearly 30 percentage points, bringing the president underwater with one of the Democrats’ key demographics 100 days before the midterms, recent polls indicate.
A July poll conducted by the Pew Research Center showed 55 percent of Asian Americans to be strongly disapproving or somewhat disapproving of Biden’s job performance. Only 44 percent somewhat or strongly approved.
In April 2021, 72 percent of Asian-American voters surveyed by the Pew Research Center approved of Biden’s job performance, amounting to a nearly 30-point drop in approval among the fastest-growing racial or ethnic group in the U.S.
Amid the polling shift, a wide range of Asian Americans are running as Republicans for state-legislative and congressional seats in battleground states, including in Virginia, Georgia, Ohio, and Arizona.
“Lots of Asian Americans voted for Democrats traditionally because they thought they were the party of pro-immigration and pro-working class, but over the years they started to wake up to see their policies are totally damaging to our communities,” Lily Tang Williams, the only Chinese-born Republican congressional candidate running this midterm cycle, told National Review.
Williams, who is running for Congress in New Hampshire, said rising crime rates fueled by Democrats’ soft-on-crime policies, discrimination in education-admissions policies, and inflation are the key issues that are making Asian Americans flee the Democratic Party.
“Lots of Asian families traditionally value education. That’s the No. 1 factor they feel enables their children to live the American dream,” she added, faulting Democrats for policies that include getting rid of honors classes and downplaying test scores in admissions.
The Supreme Court is set to hear cases on education-admissions discrimination against Asian-American students at Harvard and the University of North Carolina in October. The Supreme Court has banned racial quotas in admissions policies but has allowed race to be considered in applications as a “plus factor.”
When asked what Biden would do if the Supreme Court overturned the current admissions process, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the president would call the decision “extreme.”
Record-high inflation under Biden also resonates with Asian Americans because they “want lower taxes, they don’t want high inflation, they’re entrepreneurs, they’re small business owners, they’re landowners, and now they’re feeling like they’re getting pinched,” Williams said.
The Republican National Committee’s director of Asian-Pacific-American media, Nainoa Johsens, echoed Williams, saying Asian-American and Pacific-Island voters (AAPI) are leaving the Democratic Party due to “historic inflation, rising crime, and discrimination in education on Joe Biden’s radical agenda.”
The RNC engages with Asian-American voters the same way they do with every voter, by centering on issues that Americans care about, including the economy and inflation, Johsens told National Review. Their strategy also focuses on issues specifically important to the demographic, including discrimination in school admissions and anti-Asian crime.
The RNC has further invested in building several community centers for Asian-American voters across the country, amounting to a multi-million-dollar venture.
The centers, located in California, Georgia, Texas, and Nevada, “serve to engage the AAPI community, hear their concerns and aspirations, and help build a stronger country together,” Johsens said.
“Unlike Democrats, the GOP is engaging with the AAPI community months before the midterms and running a strong slate of AAPI Republican candidates. Asian Americans leaving the Democrat Party will be a key reason the GOP will take back the House and Senate,” he added.