Asian-Americans view Hillary Clinton more favorably than all of her opponents, including socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders and presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump, according to a new poll.
The Spring 2016 Asian American Voter Survey (AAVS) showed approximately 62 percent of Asian-Americans view Clinton favorably and 26 percent view her unfavorably.
Asian-Americans have a much less positive view of Sanders, who’s viewed favorably by 48 percent of respondents and unfavorably by 22 percent of respondents. But nearly a third, 30 percentage points, said they had never heard of or had no opinion about Sanders.
Trump is viewed most negatively, with 61 percent of respondents saying they viewed him unfavorably and 19 percent of those surveyed viewed him favorably. He is viewed most unfavorably by Korean and Japanese-Americans, as compared to other Asian ethnic groups.
A greater percentage of Asian-Americans, 20 percentage points, had no opinion or had not heard of Trump than viewed him favorably.
The Asian-Americans’ overwhelming support for Clinton compared to her Democratic and Republican opponents comes with a 12-percentage point increase in the proportion of Asian-Americans who identify as Democrats since 2012. Asian-Americans favor Democrats in Senate races by a nearly 2:1 ratio, and that margin grows in House races.
The reason for Asian-Americans’ shift toward the Democratic Party may be evidenced by their opposition to candidates they perceive as holding “anti-immigrant” or “anti-Muslim” views, the AAVS report noted.
The Spring 2016 Asian American Voter Survey polled 1,212 registered voters who identified as Asian-Americans from April 11 to May 17 with a 3 percentage point margin of error.
Asian-Americans are notoriously difficult to accurately poll, according to the Pew Research Center. The center reported that just 5.4 percentage points of American adults are of Asian descent, which makes it difficult to poll them accurately. Asians are also more likely than whites and blacks — but not Hispanics — to lack proficiency in English, which can make translating the poll questions correctly difficult, too. Many of these problems could persist into the future as just 9.6 percent of the population in 2060 is expected to be Asian, according to Pew.
UPDATE: The Republican National Committee does not approve of the AAVS and its methodology. Ninio Fetalvo, an RNC spokesman, called the survey “flawed” and noted the AAVS does not include certain details in its report, including where the sample was drawn from, the number of men and women in the poll, and how results may be weighted.
“The Asian American Voter Survey is a flawed effort at defining the AAPI electorate, and does not give much thought to the diversity within AAPI communities across the country, specifically in battleground states,” Fetalvo said.
