Asian Americans favored Harris, but shifted right by 5 points

Asian American support for Donald Trump was 5 points higher this election cycle than in 2020, marking a slight shift to the right.

The NBC News Exit Poll of early and Election Day voters indicated that 54% of Asian American voters chose Harris, while 39% voted for Trump. Harris lost seven points compared to Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) support for Biden in 2020.

Karthick Ramakrishnan, founder of AAPI Data, said that the polling shows a continuing shift that began with the 2016 presidential election cycle and Trump’s entry into the political arena.

“2012 represented the high water mark in Asian American support for a Democratic presidential candidate, and it has been going down ever since,” he said. “The pendulum has started to swing back.”

Ramakrishan pointed out that previous polling showed that the economy was a major priority for the Asian American electorate. And it is also one that proved to be a challenge for the Democratic Party, particularly given the perception that the Republican Party is stronger economically. High inflation rates in the aftermath of Covid, he added, didn’t help.

“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.”

In the NBC News Exit Poll, an estimated 514 Asian American voters were surveyed across all 50 states, including 600 polling locations nationally. Surveys were conducted in English and Spanish. Ramakrishnan noted that the survey isn’t conducted in Asian languages, posing a limitation in the data. He added that the sample is not designed to be specifically representative of Asian American voters, rather to help predict elections nationally and at the state level. Asian Americans generally live in blue states and districts, but the survey tends to pull from more competitive areas, he said.

Trip Yang, a democratic political strategist, also said he thought the perception that the GOP was stronger on the economy outweighed Democrats’ attempt to connect with voters on the issue. And for the Asian American community, a group that owns more than  3 million small businesses, that perception was particularly effective.

“One of the first policy proposals that Harris did announce in July, when she became the presumptive Democratic nominee, was a $6,000 newborn tax credit,” he said. “So you can tell the Democratic side clearly wanted to close the gap on the economy, but it was just something that, objectively, Trump led on in every single poll.”

From 1992 to 2012, the Democratic Party experienced powerful gains among Asian American voters, in part because of Bill Clinton’s economic policies, Ramakrishnan said. And the trend accelerated after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks when the GOP was seen as “unfriendly or hostile” to immigrants and communities of color. When Barack Obama ran for a second term 11 years later, nearly three-quarters of Asian Americans voted for him.  But Trump’s first presidential campaign proved to be a turning point due to his “relentless” messaging around the economy.

“He succeeded in creating an impression that the economy was doing horribly,” Ramakrishnan said. “It seems to have made a difference in the last decade.”

Additionally, for some newer immigrants, issues like identity and civil rights, that are generally associated with Democrats, may not be priorities, as they may not fully understand or identify with the fight for minority rights in the U.S., Ramakrishan said. Naturalized citizens make up the majority of the Asian American vote.

“There’s a significant difference about cultural attitudes towards civil rights,” Yang said. If you were an Asian American who was born here and speaks English, you’re much more receptive to terms like ‘criminal justice reform’, ‘cross-cultural solidarity’ and ‘Black lives matter.’”

Yang said that the shift right is still considered “incremental.” And that’s because the Asian American community does not vote monolithically.

“Within Asian American groups, there are different patterns and behaviors,” Yang said. “We don’t see that type of massive swing in AAPI voters nationally … different Asian Americans are moving in different directions.”

Ramakrishnan pointed out that the rather small size of the shift could be because voters’ level of education ended up being a major factor in vote choice. Harris performed better among college educated voters regardless of race. And more than half of Asian Americans ages 25 and older have at least a bachelor’s degree, compared to roughly one-third of the general population in the same age range.

Some other groups experienced notable shifts this election cycle. Latino voters, for example, swung toward Trump by 25 percentage points. Among white college-educated women, Harris gained significantly, giving her a 20-point advantage over Trump. In comparison, Biden had a 9-point lead last cycle. Trump also made inroads among nonwhite voters overall, with a 7-point gain.

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com