Asian Voters Abandoned Democrats in Droves and Might Not be Coming Back

After Donald Trump defeated Kamala Harris in the race for president, people argued about why Harris and the Democrats had lost to Trump. The evidence is strong that the issues voters cared about most this election were inflation and immigration, two issues where voters sided with Trump and the Republicans. I actually see this as good news as Democrats since by the next presidential election it’s likely that these issues will no longer be ones where Democrats are at a disadvantage.

What’s more worrying for Democrats long term however is the shift in voting patterns among different demographic groups. Notably, Trump greatly increased his vote share for both Hispanics and Asians, two groups that has been solidly voting Democratic. And while a majority of them still voted Democratic this election, there are signs that for both groups, the shift away from Democrats isn’t just a Trump phenomenon but could be something more permanent.

I’m going to focus on the shift away from Democrats among Asians. Why did Asians abandon Democrats in large numbers? For years Democrats have said that people should vote their personal interests. My theory is that Asian American voters finally decided to do that. Like other Americans, Asians care about a variety of issues. There are two, however, that stand out as specific Asian issues, and on both of those issues Democrats actively antagonize Asians and take the other side.

In 2023 the Supreme Court ended affirmative action in admissions to colleges and universities. This was seen as a victory for Asian Americans who for decades have been discriminated against in college admissions. It was no surprise that the six Republicans on the Court all voted to end affirmative action in colleges while the three liberals voted the other way. Democrats generally favored affirmative action because they see it as a way to help disadvantaged minorities (mostly blacks and Hispanics) and the discriminations against Asians to them was worth the price.

It’s not just college admissions where many Asians feel Democrats are working directly against them and their desire to get their children the best education possible. San Francisco Democrats, in the name of equity, banned algebra in eighth grade a decade ago, because black kids were doing so poorly in math compared to Asian kids, and their bright idea was to make things more equitable by making it harder for the smart kids to learn math. This sounds like something crazy that a right-winger would make up in a work of fiction but this was reality for a decade in San Francisco until parents banded together and forced the school system to reinstate eighth grade algebra.

These two education-related stories are from the last few weeks:

1. San Francisco parents stopped a plan to close a high performing Asian-majority school over low performing ones using a formula that gives 50% weight to equity but only 25% weight to school quality.
2. Activists in New York City are trying to prevent its elite high schools from admitting students based on merit as required by law.

Rather than backing off and agreeing not to discriminate against Asians, Democrats have moved to the next step of “let’s just close the entire school”.

The other issue Asian Americans especially care about is public safety in cities. I’ll be brief here and say that while Asian Americans see the threats to their safety mostly from physical attacks against them by random passerby who are often African American (sometimes captured on videos that go viral), Democrats and interest groups like Stop Asian Hate portray it as a problem cause by white people. The message this sends to Asian voters is that Democrats are not interested in correctly diagnosing and solving this problem.

For Asians and Hispanics, it’s not that both groups have suddenly become more conservative this election. There have always been conservatives in both groups in similar numbers to whites. Historically, many of these voters vote for Democrats despite being conservative. Whether it’s because of specific issues or a wider trend of racial depolarization in voting, both groups voted much more for Republicans this election. And while I expect 2028 to be fought over issues that are not even on the radar now that are more favorable to Democrats than inflation and the border, they need to figure out the reason for the exodus from their party by Asians and Hispanics and how to stem the tide.