Despite the fact that he was running against Vice President Kamala Harris, a Democratic candidate with a South Asian background, exit polls show Trump nearly doubled his share of votes from AAPI voters relative to his 2020 performance, subsequently flipping the Silver State red for the first time in two decades. 

Nevada has the highest percentage of AAPI voters among the seven battleground states, and the population has grown to almost 3.2 million, up from 2.7 million in 2010. The demographic shift toward Trump was the outcome of successful targeting by his campaign, voters hearing the right things, and general apathy toward the cultural issues Democrats were highlighting to excite voters.

The economy and border

Unsurprisingly, Trump’s focus on the economy and immigration was a key factor in shifting Nevada’s AAPI demographic toward the GOP. In an exit poll conducted after the interview, 64% of AAPI respondents said they voted for Trump, compared to the 61% in 2020 who said they voted for Biden

Post-election exit polls showed that his message on the twin issues pulled the race in his favor, as data showed concerns about the economy and immigration resonated with Nevadan voters across racial divides. Of the Nevada residents who voted for Trump, overwhelming majorities cited economy as their top concern, followed by immigration.

Many American Filipinos, who form the largest Asian ethnic group in Nevada, felt resentment that people could “stay here illegally” when they “went through the mill” to become permanent residents, said Jose Manuel Romualdez, the Philippines ambassador to the U.S., during post-election musings on ABS-CBN News.

James Zarsadiaz, an Associate Professor of History and Director of the Yuchengco Philippine Studies Program at the University of San Francisco, agreed.

“Some Asian immigrants and refugees in particular feel they settled in the U.S. the ‘correct’ way. Conservative messaging helps convince them that undocumented individuals sully the dignity of the legal pathways to citizenship that they took,” he wrote in an op-ed following the election. 

While immigration concerns loomed large, many professionals, including Zarsadiaz and Ana Wood, the director of the Las Vegas Asian Chamber of Commerce, said the economy was the single most important issue Nevada voters considered as they cast their votes.

“All those [rising costs] affect the Asian businesses,” Wood told the Nevada Independent in late October. “They’re finding that they have financial challenges. And I’m not talking just about restaurants — I’m talking about even the spas, nail salons, dry cleaners.”

Karthick Ramakrishnan, a political scientist and founder of the polling organization AAPI Data, told NBC News following the election that Asian Americans viewed Trump more favorably in 2024 because of economic concerns.

“If you’re unemployed or employed, if you’re retired or working, everyone feels the pain of inflation,” Ramakrishnan said. “That was a significant headwind for the Democratic Party, including Harris.”

It was the Harris campaign’s failure to adequately address concerns about the voters’ two top issues that helped drive the vice president’s historic decline in support from the AAPI community, according to Shakeel Syed, the executive director of the nonprofit South Asian Network.

“Look at Trump’s agenda: He ran on inflation and immigration primarily,” Syed told NBC. “And I think she did not address those things.”

The culture war factor

While the twin pillars of economy and immigration propelled Trump to the White House, it was the Democratic Party’s stance on controversial “culture war” issues that helped drive voters away from Harris, according to experts.

Renu Mukherjee, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, reported following the election that Asian Americans pivoted to Trump because of an “indifference” to progressive issues, including “soft on crime” measures, diversity, equity, and inclusion policies in the classroom, and abortion. 

Romualdez, the Filipino ambassador, agreed that the Harris campaign made a strategic mistake in “hammering” AAPI voters on abortion instead of kitchen table issues.

“I think the messaging was, was lost in the translation, in the sense that what’s important, really, for most people here was the economy and the illegal [immigrants.] You know, Trump was able to connect that the illegal immigration is what is causing the economy to be burdened … he was able to connect that … and that he was going to get rid of it, he was going to change and going to and bring down inflation prices,” the ambassador said.

Overall, Mukherjee wrote that “Asian Americans’ dissatisfaction with Democratic positions on the economy, crime, and education reflect their broader dissatisfaction with progressive assaults on merit, fairness, and the American dream — ideas that many Asian American groups hold dear.”

Multiple national surveys in recent years have indicated Asian Americans increasingly view relaxed crime policies backed by progressives with disfavor. ​The majority of Asian Americans in California, which borders Nevada, supported the passage of a ballot measure this year that sought to roll back some of the Golden State’s more lenient penalties for certain offenses. 

The Democratic Party’s view on racial equity in the education system and movement away from merit-based standards has also turned AAPI voters away, according to Asra Nomani, a former journalism professor at Georgetown University.

“The injustice of being labeled as ‘privileged,’ ‘selfish,’ ‘cheaters,’ ‘overrepresented,’ ‘white adjacent,’ and ‘resource hoarders’ hurt very deeply,” Nomani said during an interview with RealClearPolitics. It led to “political mobilization and a reconsideration of long-standing political loyalties.”

Some members of the AAPI community rejected Harris because her campaign’s liberal stance on gender identity conflicted with their religious beliefs. Others, particularly Filipino voters with backgrounds in communist countries, gravitated toward Republicans due to their “conservative” tendencies, according to Pauline Lee, the president of the Nevada Republican Club and a Chinese American.

With Filipino Americans currently being the largest and fastest-growing segment of the AAPI population in the U.S., Lee told the Nevada Independent that the “older Filipinos who came to this country are all conservative,” in comments that were backed up by Filipino Ambassador Romualdez.

Trump made his pitch directly

Trumpworld made reaching the voting bloc a large focus of efforts in Nevada, with Turning Point USA holding an AAPI-themed rally in Las Vegas just weeks before Election Day. Trump himself appeared at the event alongside Hawaiian native Tulsi Gabbard, a top campaign surrogate, hailing her as “an incredible leader from the Asian American Pacific Community,” as he delivered remarks that focused largely on the economy and the border.

TPUSA president Charlie Kirk concluded the pitch to Asian Americans, saying, “Just as we’re seeing huge shifts with Hispanics and the black community, this is a group that is poised to resonate powerfully with President Trump’s message of economic empowerment, law-and-order, safe streets, and a return to orderly, sane immigration policies.