cross-posted at Election Inspection
If there is one myth I've heard passed around that is desperately in need of puncturing, it is the myth of the "Asian Vote". Hillary's victory in California was attributed to her large margins with both Latinos and with "Asians". And many pundits, including noted idiot Dick Morris, think Hillary has a good shot at winning Hawaii due to the fact that "Asians" are in the majority in Hawaii.
Bullshit. There is no Asian vote.
Read below the flip for more.
I went to a public university where about 1/3rd of the student population was classified as "Asian". By the university, that is, not by themselves. Mostly, they were Koreans, divided into religious (mainly Baptist) and secular camps. Korean-Americans, culturally and politically, are very unlike Chinese-Americans, who are nothing like Filipino-Americans, who are completely different from Japanese-Americans, who have very little in common with Indian-Americans, who are absolutely distinct from Vietnamese-Americans. And so on and so forth. The only reason that the term "Asian-American" exists is that the rest of America tries to treat them all the same, occasionally making it useful for them to band together.
In particular, although I don't have proof, I'm quite certain Hillary's "Asian" victory in California is due in large measure to the Filipino vote. Filipinos are the largest Asian minority in California. They are Catholics, and large numbers of them work in the Health Care industry as doctors, nurses, dentists, and other professionals. Unusually, Filipino men usually vote Democrat, while Filipino women vote Republican. Strong female archetypes abound in the Filipino community, and the Phillipines have elected two women as President in recent memory. In summary, Clinton does well with Catholics and voters whose top issue is health care, and this is definitely one demographic that gravitates towards strong female authority figures.
I would not be surprised if she won the Vietnamese-American vote, a politically conservative subgroup who generally favor a more aggressive foreign policy. I would also guess that Hillary found success with Korean-Americans, a politically moderate group with lower average household incomes than whites. Hillary's Iraq vote won't hurt with the former, and her success with working-class voters and moderates suggest victory with the latter. These groups are concentrated in southern California. The Chinese-American vote, I grant you, I cannot make predictions about, but this is because Chinese-Americans are a very varied group, with many subgroups that all have different properties. Some Chinese-Americans are strongly anti-communists who oppose the Chinese government, while others are supporters of China who might be favorably inclined to Bill Clinton's policies in China.
Japanese-Americans, on the other hand, might have supported Obama. Many Japanese-Americans live in Washington, which went heavily to Obama, as well as northern California, where Obama beat Hillary (but was unable to overcome her margins in southern California). The experience of Japanese-Americans favors a candidate with a strong commitment to respecting constitutional rights and human rights, and a more peaceful foreign policy. In short, this is a more progressive group, and Obama does well with progressives and anti-war voters.
The point of all this is that the largest ethnic group in Hawaii isn't "Asians", it's Japanese-Americans, followed by Native Hawaiians, followed by Filipinos. And while Hillary may do well with the Filipino vote, the rest of Hawaii is likely to view Barack Obama as the favorite son that he is (he went to high school here), and will vote in patterns far more like the state of Washington than California.
Even though there are no recent polls in Hawaii, I predict Obama will win Hawaii by 20% or more. Never mind Dick Morris.
Stop talking about how "Asians" will vote, because the idea that Asians vote in similar patterns (or are evenly distributed enough to vote in similar patterns from state to state overall) is a stupid, ignorant, fucking myth.