It’s no secret that thanks to Donald Trump, the Republican Party may be headed for historic lows among non-white Americans. After all, Trump has gone out of his way to insult Latinos and Muslims, and blow dog whistles at blacks. Well, Sunday’s edition of The New York Times revealed that Trump may potentially cost the GOP another minority group as well–Asian-Americans.
This story was lost in the furor over the leak of Trump’s 1995 tax returns. However, it’s almost as alarming. Historically, Asian-Americans tilted Republican–indeed, as the Old Grey Lady put it, in demographic terms they were “the perfect Republicans.” They tended to be socially conservative, and many of them were small businessmen. Additionally, many of them were a generation removed from living under Communism, and thus strongly supported the GOP’s strong anti-Communist policies. As late as 1992, they gave George H. W. Bush 55 percent of the vote to Bill Clinton’s 31 percent.
By 2012, however, Asian-Americans had swung dramatically to the Democrats. Barack Obama carried them with a punishing 73 percent of the vote, roughly the same margin by which Latinos backed the president. Two recent polls seem to confirm that this shift is still very much underway. This spring, Asian and Pacific Islander American Vote found that 47 percent of Asian Americans identified as Democrats, versus only 35 percent in 2012. Just last month, the Pew Research Center found that Asian-Americans have trended Democratic at a faster rate than any other ethnic group–including Latinos.
The conclusion is obvious–Asian-Americans were opening up to the Democrats well before the Donald came along. He’s just pushing them toward the Democrats a lot faster. To many of them, the Donald’s call for mass deportations reminds them of past instances of discrimination. Chinese-Americans see echoes of the Chinese Exclusion Act, which barred Chinese laborers from entering this country from 1882 to 1943. Japanese-Americans get flashbacks of the mass internments of their forebears during World War II.
The potential problems Trump has with Asian-Americans are magnified by their increased prominence in two states that Trump absolutely, positively has to win in order to have any realistic shot at beating Hillary Clinton–Nevada and Virginia. In Nevada, for instance, Asian-Americans make up seven percent of the state’s voting population–a figure that’s expected to double by 2020.
Even with this dramatic shift, Republicans don’t think that Asian-Americans are completely lost to them. For instance, Lanhee Chen, the policy chief for the Romney campaign, thinks Trump’s tough talk on immigration won’t have as much of an effect on Asian-Americans because his proposals are not as “directly harmful” as they would be to Latinos.
Still, when a demographic moves more than 40 points in 20 years, it can only be described as a flashing red light for the GOP. When a demographic goes Democratic by more than 70 percent of the vote, it’s a flashing red light. All together? If the Donald isn’t careful, he could permanently turn another minority group away from the GOP.
