Asian American organizations caution Biden and Trump about their potential to influence election outcomes

President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump could be leaving Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander votes on the table before November’s election, according to Asian American advocacy groups.

With the country’s Asian American population and voter participation rate increasing exponentially, the groups are encouraging both campaigns to reach out to the community they represent.

Asian Americans form one of the fastest-growing demographics, second only to “two or more races,” increasing by 81% or a record 18.9 million people between 2000 and 2019, according to the 2020 Census. Asian American voter turnout also increased by 47% in 2020, in comparison to 2016, per TargetSmart, a political data analysis firm.

“Eventually, the political establishment will catch up with that important demographic trajectory,” Suffolk University Political Research Center director David Paleologos told the Washington Examiner.

Simultaneously, only half of Asian American voters were contacted by either Democrats or Republicans in the year before the 2022 midterm elections, according to Asian and Pacific Islander American Vote’s Asian American Voter Survey from that cycle.

“Voter engagement by candidates and their campaigns is crucial in building the trust with the community needed to get your message to them,” APIAVote policy and advocacy director Bob Sakaniwa told the Washington Examiner. “Doing so in language with the ethnic media and with trusted messengers who are part of the community is vital.”

Sakaniwa cited Rep. Tom Souzzi‘s (D-NY) campaign to replace former Republican Rep. George Santos in New York‘s 3rd Congressional District as “a good illustration of effective outreach to the community.”

“[Eighteen percent] of the NY-03 electorate is AAPI, which both campaigns understood, and while the [Republican Mazi] Pilip’s campaign did use in-language phone calling and social media, the Suozzi campaign used trusted surrogates like nearby Rep. [Grace] Meng, in-language mailers, and phone banking to better effect,” Sakaniwa said. “The bottom line is that the community needs to be met where they are, in language by known, trusted messengers, and this takes a lot of groundwork.”

Terry Ao Minnis, vice president of census and voting programs for Asian Americans Advancing Justice, previewed another APIAVote Asian American Voter Survey this summer “that will help identify the issues most important to Asian American voters and if contact by either political party has increased.”

“What Asian Americans need to see is attention to our issues within candidates’ campaigns and an increase in the availability of in-language voter materials,” Minnis told the Washington Examiner.

David Lee, a San Francisco State University political science professor and the Chinese American Voters Education Committee’s executive director, said Asian American voters will be particularly pivotal in Nevada, adding that the community tends not to register with a party, so it cannot take part in every primary election.

“The Asian community tends to vote in general elections, presidential elections, that’s when you’ll tend to see them participate and you’ll probably likely see high numbers there,” Lee told the Washington Examiner. “None of the presidential campaigns have done a great job reaching out to AAPI voters. I think there’s a lot of opportunities with the Asian vote. That’s really up for grabs.

“In a tight race like this, where swing states like Nevada and other states with large Asian populations, including Michigan, it’s a missed opportunity to ignore this large and fast-growing voting bloc,” he continued. “It’s a voting bloc that’s sizable enough to swing an election, a tight election, and, if you look at the swing states, Asians can make a difference.”

The Biden campaign remains confident in its Asian American voter outreach strategy, with the president hosting an Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander History Month event at the White House on Monday. There, in the Rose Garden, he underscored his racial equity executive order, his Asian American presidential advisory commission, his Asian American White House initiative, and his Asian American national strategy, in addition to his economic, immigration, environment, and healthcare policies.

“I’ll never forget him lying about the pandemic,” Biden told a crowd of Trump. “I’ll never forget the rise of anti-Asian hate crimes during the pandemic.

“Folks, my predecessor wants a country just for some of us,” he said. “We want a country for all of us.”

Biden is additionally scheduled to deliver the keynote address at the Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies’s 30^th Annual Gala on Tuesday in Washington, D.C. Kamala Harris, the first minority female vice president, whose Indian background is sometimes overshadowed by her black heritage, spoke at the conference Monday.

“We have to know that sometimes people will open the door for you and leave it open,” Harris told the confab. “Sometimes they won’t, and then you need to kick that f***ing door down.”

In November 2023, the Biden campaign announced what it called the “largest, earliest investment” in Asian American paid media as part of a $25 million ad buy, with a TV spot, “Family Business,” airing in the Phoenix market for three weeks, according to a spokeswoman.

That was supplemented by a six-week, $30 million static and digital ad buy in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, as well as national Asian American news outlets, such as the Asian Journal and Korea Daily, in March.

“Buys across all of our battlegrounds reflect the importance of voters in every state, while overindexing on high population AANHPI battlegrounds,” the Biden campaign spokeswoman told the Washington Examiner.

Trump’s campaign expressed similar confidence in its Asian American strategy, regardless of concerns about its lack of organizing and ground game this election season. Instead, the Trump campaign points to a January AAPI Data/AP-NORC poll that found three of the top five issues for Asian American voters were inflation, the economy more generally, and immigration, concerns for which Biden’s approval ratings have been poor, though other matters included environment and climate change, and healthcare reform, on which he perform better.

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“There has been no bigger advocate for the AAPI community than President Trump, as he created an environment where diversity, equal opportunity, and prosperity were afforded to everybody,” Trump campaign senior adviser Steven Cheung told the Washington Examiner. “Anyone who says otherwise is disgustingly using the AAPI community to play political games for their own benefit.

“The 2024 campaign is poised to build upon the strength and successes of Asian Americans during President Trump’s first term to propel him to a historic second term victory,” Cheung said.