Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair
It’s emerging as a major anomaly in the 2024 presidential swing states polls While Donald Trump is gaining and slightly leading Kamala Harris in three of the most important swing states in the Sunbelt – AZ, GA and NC – Harris still clings to a stubborn polling lead in a fourth swing state, Nevada. It’s just 1.2 points, according to the latest Real Clear Politics polling averages, but it hasn’t budged much for months. In fact, Harris has led Trump in most polls in Nevada since late August. And with just a month left in the race, and critical battlegrounds hanging in the balance elsewhere, it’s doubtful that the former president will even make a serious play for the Silver State.
Part of the reason, of course, is the state’s election history. Nevada hasn’t voted Red since George W. Bush captured the state twice – in 2000 and 2004, by 2.5 and 3.5 points, respectively. In fact, Democrats – and many Republicans – still tend to think of Nevada as reliably Blue. Obama twice won the state by sizable margins – 13 and 7 points in 2008 and 2012, respectively. And Trump has lost the state twice – to Clinton and Biden, each time by nearly 3 points. While far more competitive than neighboring New Mexico, which has leaned Democratic by double digits for years, Nevada, arguably, hasn’t been in serious contention for the past four election cycles. And with just 6 electoral votes – compared to 16 each for NC and GA, and 9 for AZ – there’s good reason for Trump to concentrate his precious campaign resources elsewhere.
But there’s another reason, too, for Nevada’s status as an outlier. Its fast-growing Asian-American population. Unlike the nation’s Hispanics, who are tilting increasingly toward Trump, Asian-Americans in Nevada (and elsewhere) are voting Democratic by a 2-1 margin, according to recent polls. Moreover, their numbers in Nevada are unusually impactful: Elsewhere in the Sunbelt, Asian Americans constitute no more than 4% of any one state’s total electorate. But in Nevada, their share is a whopping 12%, giving Harris an important buffer against Hispanic (and other) defections. According to some local political analysts, it may well be the reason she’s still in the lead.
Harris, of course, is America’s first partly Asian-American presidential candidate which does make her unusually attractive to this demographic group, especially Indian-Americans, the fastest growing segment. In Nevada, several different nationality groups predominate but none is more important to Harris’s prospects than Filipino-Americans, with close to 200,000 registered voters. First arriving generations ago as circus workers; over the years, they’ve become a mainstay of Nevada’s burgeoning entertainment-oriented service sector. Filipinos from other states where their numbers are much larger – especially in California – also look to Nevada as an attractive retirement center. In addition to plentiful work, the state offers lower taxes and more affordable homes and a dry temperate climate – a reason many Califoirnians, including Hispanics, are migrating here as well.
Democrats haven’t always noticed the state’s Asian-American population – or conducted serious outreach to win their votes But a sea change in the party’s thinking occurred in 2020 when Democrats needed to mobilize new voters to try to swing Georgia, a traditional Deep Red state. In addition to Biden, two Democratic candidates were vying to win their highly-contested Senate contests. The stakes were high: Not just the presidency, but also control of the Senate. And the gambit worked: Asian-Americans, though just 4% of the state’s electorate, turned out in record numbers to support the Democrats, giving Biden & Co their margin of victory.
Harris is well-aware of the strategic potential of Filipinos especially in Nevada. Just two weeks ago, she launched a major digital ad campaign to coincide with Filipino Heritage Month. It’s arguably the largest and most targeted outreach to Filipino-Americans in US election history, with virtually nothing on the GOP side to offset its likely impact. And it’s just the beginning of a non-stop Harris media campaign as the race elsewhere seems to be tilting in Trump’s favor, and Nevada’s importance to an Electoral College victory looms larger than ever
Harris is also ramping up her efforts to capture the Asian-American vote in other swing states where she and Trump are divided by razor-thin margins. Last month, a major new music video ad campaign aimed specifically at Indian-American voters got underway. Produced by Ritesh Parikh of Awesome TV, the Bollywood-themed campaign incorporates messages in multiple South Asian languages, including Telugu, Tamil, Gujarati, Punjabi and Hindi. The video includes a song “Nacho, nacho,” which is based on the super-hit number from the 2022 movie RRR. It features vocals by popular singer Shibani Kashyap along with visuals from the Harris campaign and messages from South Asian and Indian American supporters. Ajay Bhutoria, a prominent Indian American community leader and chairman of Harris’ National Finance Committee, is responsible for producing and overseeing the video, which is just the first in a series that he plans to release for Harris over the remaining days of the race.
Filipino-Amricans are especially critical in Nevada but In terms of sheer size, no Asian American group is more important for both parties these days than Indian-Americans, with more than 150,000 voters in Georgia and Pennsylvania, and about 100,000 in Michigan, according to the estimates compiled by the Asian American Voter Survey. Indian-Americans are also the single most affluent population sub-group in the United States, with median incomes above $110,000 per year. Many Indian-Americans are highly trained professionals in the IT and engineering fields, and they enjoy strong transnational ties back to their homeland where they continue to influence internal politics. Trump made an unprecedented effort to appeal to Indian-Americans in 2016, and after his victory, named three Indian-Americans, including his incoming UN Ambassador Nikk Haley, to top posts in his administration. The former president also conducted a major diplomatic offensive to woo India’s popular Prime Minister Narendra Modi as a strategic ally against China in the Pacific – a stance that found favor with Indian-American voters.
There’s an intriguing parallel here: While Democrats increasingly look to Asian-Americans to offset their losses among Hispanics, Republicans are cultivating Indian-American support as a potential counterweight to the Democrats’ near-monopoly over African-Americans. Democrats have reason to fear GOP encroachments. According to polls conducted by the Asian American Voter Survey (AAVS) in July, the number of Indians identifying as Democrats slipped to 54% in 2020, and now stands at just 47%, the lowest Democratic share ever recorded. Even worse, just 46% of Indian Americans said they would vote for a Democratic candidate in 2024 compared with 65% in 2020. Indian-American voters, more than many groups, including non-Hispanic Whites, tend to identify with the GOP “prosperity” message and even Trump’s MAGA message resonates with these voters, in part because Modi in India has adopted his own version of it – “Make India Great Again.” This is potentially an enormous obstacle to the Harris campaign as it seeks to woo these voters back to the Democrats in November.
For Asian-Americans, the renewed attention by Republicans and Democrats alike is long-overdue. Much as Hispanics have felt for decades, Asian-Americans have felt marginalized from national politics and opportunistically exploited when elections draw near. Despite their important role in assisting Democrats in 2020, Asian-Americans were shut out from the president’s cabinet – a major diversity setback. Protests from the Asian-Americans proved deeply embarrassing during Biden’s first year, and despite some fence-mending – including a high-profile White House campaign against Asian hate crimes – the community is still stinging from the administration’s rebuff. Harris, currently trapped in a statistical dead-heat with Trump nearly everywhere, is well-positioned to make fresh gains with voters who share her cultural heritage. Indeed, if she does manage to prevail in November, it may be due in no small part to her campaign’s last-ditch massive outreach to voters who have finally come of age.
To be sure, Asian Americans are still a relatively small ethnic constituency nationally, relative to Hispanics (19%) and African-Americans 13%). But while largely unnoticed, they are also far and away the fastest-growing one – with a growth rate (a whopping 81% for 2000-2019, which doubled their size) far surpassing even that of Hispanics. Thanks to their important role in Georgia in 2020, and potentially several swing states in 2024, both parties are beginning to take notice of their potential and of the need to conduct more sustained outreach beyond election-year pandering.
Still, serious obstacles do remain – including the unusually high percentage of Asian-Americans who are immigrants and therefore, ineligible to vote. Those who can vote require campaign messaging and materials presented in a plethora of different languages – from Hindi to Tagalog – which may boost campaign costs – especially in local elections – considerably, taxing campaign budgets.. In addition, despite tilting Democratic overall, the ideological and generational diversity – indeed, fragmentation — among Asian-Americans requires Democrats and Republicans alike to craft and vary their messages with greater nuance and precision than with other ethnic constituencies.
And it’s not just Indians or Filipinos. In battleground Wisconsin, Harris recently sent her husband Doug Emhoff on a campaign swing to appeal to Hmong and Laotian refugees, who first arrived in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. Most Vietnamese refugees tilt GOP, by a wide margin, but sensing an opening, the Harris campaign decided to send Emhoff to this year’s annual Hmong cultural festival to stump for her candidacy and for the candidacy of down-ballot Democrats running this year. Why the Hmong? While a tiny community overall, they are the largest Asian-American demographic in the Badger State, comprising a third of the total, with well over 100,000 eligible voters. And local Republicans, it turned out, were also in full force at the Hmong festival this year – another precedent. Harris’ last-minute initiative may or may not work, but given the stakes, and the possibility of several states being decided by a swing of a few thousand votes, no group, it seems, is too small to warrant more sustained campaign attention.
And it’s not just the presidency, of course. Asian-Americans, like Hispanics, are beginning to show up in ever increasing numbers as mayoral and state assembly candidates, as well as contenders for positions in the US Senate. A Hmong candidate is currently vying for a seat in the Wisconsin state assembly, a first for the community. And Vietnamese-born Hung Cao, the first Vietnamese member of the Virginia state assembly, is running against veteran Democrat and former 2016 vice-presidential candidate Tim Kaine for a seat in the US Senate, representing the Commonwealth, another major precedent.
All in all, whoever wins the presidency this year, the 2024 race will likely be a watershed, or an inflection point, in American politics. Once an afterthought, or mere bystanders to the nation’s governing processes, Asian-Americans – separately, and in a broader alliance – are beginning to exercise considerable leverage over the nation’s two parties – as well as third parties that can offer fresh outlets for political representation. It’s incumbent upon the two parties to spend the additional resources needed to fully integrate Asian Americans into their campaign strategies – and not just out of expediency, but out of a deep-seated respect for the communities and their contribution to America’s ever-expanding cultural mosaic.
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