Karthick Ramakrishnan

Courting the Asian American Electorate: What Do They Care About?

DOI 10.1515/cjpp-2014-0007 Calif. J. Politics Policy 2014; 6(3): 361–379 Karthick Ramakrishnan* and Miriam Yeung Courting the Asian American Electorate: What Do They Care About? Findings from the 2012 National Asian American Survey and the 2012 AAPI Post-Election Survey Abstract: The 2012 National Asian American Survey (NAAS) is nationally repre- sentative survey of the policy priorities and issue preferences of Asian Americans conducted in ten Asian languages (Cantonese, Hindi, Hmong, Khmer, Korean, Japanese, Mandarin, Tagalog, Thai and Vietnamese). Results from NAAS can be disaggregated to the top six largest ethnic Asian American groups – Chinese, Asian Indian, Filipino, Korean, Japanese and Vietnamese. In 2012, we were able to survey an oversample of Native Hawaiians and Samoans but for the purposes of this report, we will be focusing on the Asian American communities. This report presents the results of 4269 telephone interviews of Asian American adults conducted between July 31, 2012 and October 20, 2012 (which we often refer to as the “pre-election survey”) and 6139 Asian American registered voters interviewed between November 7, 2012 and December 26, 2012 (which we often refer to as the AAPI Post-Election Survey, or AAPI PES). Keywords: Asian Americans; 2012 election; public opinion. *Corresponding author: Karthick Ramakrishnan, UC Riverside, Political Science, Riverside, CA 92521, USA, e-mail: karthick.ramakrishnan@ucr.edu Miriam Yeung: National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum, New York, NY, USA 1 Executive Summary The 2012 National Asian American Survey (NAAS) is nationally representa- tive survey of the policy priorities and issue preferences of Asian Americans conducted in ten Asian languages (Cantonese, Hindi, Hmong, Khmer, Korean, Japanese, Mandarin, Tagalog, Thai and Vietnamese). Results from NAAS can be disaggregated to the top six largest ethnic Asian American groups – Chinese, Asian Indian, Filipino, Korean, Japanese and Vietnamese. In 2012, we were able to survey an oversample of Native Hawaiians and Samoans but for the purposes of this report, we will be focusing on the Asian American communities. This