Changing patterns of Asian-American partisanship: Accounting for the politicization of the U.S.’s fastest growing minority

Asian Americans are the fastest growing and most diverse minority in the United States, but they have become more alike in terms of their partisan preferences and increasing politicization. Evidence for these changes can be found in two National Surveys of Asian Americans, the first of which was completed in 2008 and showed that Asian Americans were mostly nonpartisans but also that those who were partisans tended to support the Democratic Party. The second survey, completed in 2016, however, indicated that there was an increase in the proportion of democratic identifiers and, also, a significant decline in the proportion of nonpartisans with a concomitant rise in the number of purposive Independents. These shifts suggest that there has been a distinct politicization of Asian Americans, and our purpose in this article is to identify and calibrate the factors that account for these partisan shifts.