Asian American Candidate Preferences: Evidence from California

Abstract

The diversity of the Asian American population presents challenges for theories of bloc voting, partisan voting, and descriptive representation. What cues (if any) do Asian American voters rely on? How informative are racial and partisan cues to Asian American voters. This article looks at the candidate preferences of Asian American voters in the 2018 election. I look at elections where an Asian American candidate was on the ballot and compare outcomes within district to the gubernatorial race (a race with no minorities on the ballot). I use surname-coded voter registration records and precinct-level vote returns to estimate Asian American candidate preferences as a racial group and by national-origin. I find strong evidence of national-origin preferences (i.e. Vietnamese for a Vietnamese candidate) among Asian American voters. In instances where the national-origin of the candidate and the national-origin of the voter did not align, voters seem to rely on partisan cues. National-origin preferences are sufficient enough that in one instance voters switched parties within the same election to vote for a candidate of the same national-origin. These findings have implications for theories of minority vote choice and challenges the existing literature on the strength of partisan cues (replication data can be found at: https://sites.google.com/view/vivienleung/research).