Melissa Harris-Perry: Thanks for staying with The Takeaway. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry. If you've been listening to the show at all lately, you can probably tell I've got midterm elections on the brain. Voter turnout in midterm elections is consistently lower than in presidential election years, but a recent national poll found that more than two-thirds of registered Asian-American and Pacific Islander American voters, are planning to get out to the polls in this year's midterms.

But that same poll indicated that a majority of these voters have never been contacted by canvassers from either political party. Now I know you might be thinking, "That's great news." Actually, it raises a question for us, why? I decided to turn to a colleague, friend and expert on the topic.

Jane Junn: I'm Jane Junn. I'm a professor of political science and gender studies at the University of Southern California.

Melissa: Jane has long been a foundational scholar when it comes to AAPI political behavior, and like any good social scientist, she started our conversation by clarifying who exactly we're talking about today.

Jane: Well, I think the AAPI, so that is Asian-American Pacific Islander, is probably the one that covers the full panoply of diversity inside of the larger category, but it's important to note that, of course, all of the groups that are considered within AAPI have been enumerated separately by the United States government in the racial taxonomy for centuries. There's a distinction between groups such as long-standing Asian-Americans, including Chinese and Japanese, who've been in the United States, really, since the 19th century, as well as other groups who are more recently included.

I think that probably the best way to describe the group is in its fullest form of Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders, and that includes Native Hawaiians as well, to account for the broad diversity, and yet at the same time also considering the fact that Asian-Americans are considered Asian-Americans because we're not white.

Melissa: Data that was released midsummer about Asian Pacific Islander American potential voters, was in certain ways not surprising, and in other ways jaw dropping. On the one hand, two-thirds of registered Asian American voters who were surveyed said they plan to vote, but only about half had ever been contacted by either of the major parties. Are you at all surprised by those numbers?

Jane: Sadly, I'm not surprised and it's a function of a number of things. I think the first reason is that the parties have never looked to Asian-Americans, at least in the national context, as being a critical voting bloc for them, and that's in part due to the relatively small size of the population. If you disaggregate and go a little bit further down from the national level, you might find the politics of mobilization to be a little bit different, and you might find that in certain locations, let's say the State of Georgia, possibly Virginia, even in locations in California, mobilizing Asian-Americans is actually more of a priority for the major parties. In addition, you might also consider the constraints or rather the incentives that political parties have to mobilize voters. I believe that recent survey that came out in the end of July of '22 also provided distributions of partisan identification among Asian-Americans who are registered to vote. What you'll see from those data is there's a much higher proportion of potential voters among Asian-Americans who are unaffiliated with either party.

Now, while that's the case, overall, for American voters, it's a little bit bigger and the constraint, or rather the incentive here for political parties is that for the most part parties aren't going to ask you to come out to vote if they don't know how you're going to vote. In other words, most of the time parties will try to mobilize a sure thing. That is to say, long-standing, devoted voters either to the Democratic Party, for which there are more Asian-Americans who consider themselves to be Democrats, versus the Republican Party who would have the same concern. You don't want to mobilize a voter if you think she's going to actually come out and vote for the other party.

Melissa: Presumably AAPI voters are a bit up for grabs as a result of not having this strong affiliation with a party. On the one hand, I understand absolutely the point of not wanting to mobilize someone if you're not certain. On the other hand, does it mean that AAPI voters are up for grabs at a time when so much polarization and calcification has occurred, that anytime you can find a community where presumably you could appeal to interests and build a new group, that that will be so beneficial to parties.

Jane: Asian-American voters could be critical swing voters, particularly in states that are in play. You just need a small number of voters to come one way or another. Now, that is, I think, an internal logic, which is in some respects defied the mobilization wings of both of the political parties. Having said that, there may be efforts that are being undertaken by parties, in the traditional arms of parties, but probably more likely among community-based organizations and other advocacy groups, to bring Asian American voters to the polls.

At this point, it's not only just to win a particular election for a specific candidate, but it's really to provide voice to the many opinions of Asian American voters. We're becoming a much larger proportion of the population with a diverse set of interests. Having said that, Asian-Americans lean Democratic and I think if there's a party that would benefit most from Asian-Americans coming to the polls, it's the Democratic Party.

Melissa: Nearly 200 AAPI candidates running in elections at all levels of government this year. There are also a few races where AAPI candidates are running against one another. One is in Georgia, as you mentioned. Georgia State Senator Michelle Au is in a race against a Republican candidate Narender Reddy. What do you make of campaigns like these?

Jane: Well, I think what's the most interesting about them is these are generals. They're not primaries. The most races that feature two non-white minority candidates is, you normally see that in a primary. This is a general. I think that what's useful and interesting about it is there's a whole bunch of things that are at play. There are also many more, I would say, Republican Asian-American candidates for office that are running in a general compared to, let's say, long-standing minority groups in the United States such as African Americans.

I think what's most useful about the elections is to see where it is that candidates fall and how they make their cases to voters. Do they make it around ethnicity? I think for the most part, they're going for the issues and they may be distancing themselves from other national level candidates, given the circumstances of what's happening right now in politics.

Melissa: When you talk about appealing to the issues, in the same poll that we've been talking about, this late July poll, AAPI voters ranked healthcare, the economy, education, crime, as their top issues and surprise, surprise, they're basically pretty aligned with the rest of the American electorate.

Jane: Yes. I think to say that the bundle of issues that bring voters to the polls are important, but also to recognize that certain aspects of certain issues affect people classified by race in different ways. I think embedded in those polling data are also the issues of immigration, as well as in particular, violence around COVID and discrimination on the basis of race. I think that these are issues, the latter two are issues that affect Asian Americans acutely and certainly, in the broader scheme of things, how it is we think about who belongs to the nation and who should be allowed to vote and who should be treated equally.

It doesn't have to be an issue that occupies 90% of that public's imagination, but instead it could be the straw that broke the camel's back, to send that voter to one candidate or another. The strategic use of that message could be quite important than in the outcome of turning a voter who is not strongly committed to one party or another toward a specific candidate.

Melissa: I'm interested, for example, in how issues related to nations of origin might figure really differently in terms of politics for first gens, second gens, versus those who immigrated and were naturalized as potential voters. So that the issues of the politics of India, of Pakistan, the question of concerns around China and issues of the Mainland and of Singapore, might resonate really differently for the granddaughter of, versus the first generation immigrant?

Jane: I think the data provide the opportunity to disentangle the effects, let's say, as you noted of generation of migrations, or immigrants are different type of voter or political consumer precisely because of that status of being a newcomer. How much of it, on the other hand, has to do with a political history and context of, let's say, fleeing communism, as you might argue for Vietnamese Americans, or alternatively to being colonized subject as Filipinos were for many years, as plenty of other Asian-Americans now in the United States today, I think that those are all good arguments for, and helpful ways to think about how the voter thinks about how to vote in a given election, or whether to even come out and vote. But I think that over-generalizing it can be problematic. I'll give you an example.

Among Japanese-Americans in the United States today, they used to be a huge group in the United States in terms of their proportion of the Asian American population. That's only because they've been in the United States for a while due to migration from way back in the 19th century. As a result, Asian-Americans who are of Japanese origin, tend to be much more advanced in terms of generational status. They're also among the strongest Democrats.

Part of the reason for Japanese-Americans is specific to the experiences they've had as American citizens, and in particular, their internment and imprisonment by the United States government during World War II. That kind of an experience is not something that generations of people will forget. Now at the same time, you might say, okay, well, if that's the case for immigrants who've been in the United States a long time, then recent immigrants must be [unintelligible 00:11:15] up for grabs.

Well, actually, if you look at the most immigrant or among the most heavily immigrant of Asian-Americans, so this would be South Asian Indians. This group of Asian-Americans, now classified as Asian-Americans are as democratic, if not more than Japanese-Americans, and their migration status is much more recent. You could argue in this case, or you might explain that as a function of the time in which Indian-Americans, South Asian and Pakistani Americans have come to the United States, during a time in which democratic policies allowing migration, H1B visas, naturalization to citizenship, has helped to propel for them an agenda for what Democrats are good for, for their group.

Melissa: Stay with us on The Takeaway. When we come back, we're talking about how AAPI voters are considering core issues in this midterm cycle.

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Thanks for sticking with us and with me here on The Takeaway. I'm MHP and I've been talking with professor Jane Junn about what issues might animate AAPI voters in the midterm elections. She pointed out that AAPI voters are not so different from other American voters, but the unique experiences of being in Asian-American communities can play an important role in political choices.

Jane: I think similar to other groups of Americans, regardless of race and ethnicity, Asian-Americans are pretty similar in the sense that most of them believe that abortion, and reproductive rights more generally, should be up to the person whose body is making the decision. I think there is variation inside of the group of Asian-Americans and for the most part, that is driven by stronger religious affiliation, in particular Catholicism, or also like born again Christians, for example.

Fundamentalist Christians, you might find, and there are fundamentalist Christians among Asian-Americans. You might find a stronger opposition to abortion, but like most Americans, Asian-Americans favor abortion rights, not perhaps for everything all the way up until the third trimester, but certainly with respect to instances of saving the life of the mother, of rape and of incest. Asian-Americans are pretty much the same as other Americans for the same reason.

To the extent that abortion rights are a question of the liberty of the individual to control what she does to her body, I think Asian-Americans are in agreement with the rest of the United States. As far as what impact it has or will have on voting, I believe it remains to be seen because voting is a whole lot more about than one issue. We don't see that many single-issue voters among really the entire voting population, and also true for Asian Americans, a panoply of issues affect them.

Melissa: This is probably not going to impact the midterm elections and perhaps shouldn't because it's really about what the Supreme Court is going to decide to do next, but it does seem to me this is going to open a possibility of some interracial and interethnic anxieties. That's the question of affirmative action, which is going to be before the court, and just based on nothing but prediction from the court's last term, is quite possibly going to be the end of at least affirmative action, small as it is, that we know it now.

I think there's a real possibility for this to become politicized not only as being about white Americans, but also about Asian-Americans. Do you have any thoughts around how this affirmative action conversation that will emerge in our politics might get navigated by AAPI communities?

Jane: Well, I think that in general, affirmative action is in the broadest understanding, is there to benefit anybody who has been dispossessed or discriminated against. It doesn't just mean it's only for certain minority groups or for certain-- or for minorities for that matter at all. I think the issue for Asian-Americans then, is to better understand and be educated about how Asian-Americans wouldn't be where they were today if it wasn't for the civil rights movement, and it wasn't for African-American leaders who brought civil rights to Congress, and who in fact made sure that both civil rights and voting rights were something that could be preserved, that could be instantiated and then preserved.

What am I saying? I'm saying that the perception may be among, let's just say one of the parties, maybe Republicans would be that you could use, or you could weaponize this issue of affirmative action to turn Asian-American voters against Democrats, who are for the most part favorable toward immigration, whether it's in higher education and admissions or in other areas.

I think it's maybe too easy of a wish. I think that voters are smarter than that. Voters understand you might get some play around it. You might generate some anger. You might generate some concern, but for the most part, and again, affirmative action benefits everybody, and it's not intended to benefit a single group. I think that Asian-American voters and American voters more generally are smart enough to understand that.

It is not the case that affirmative action or policies on it should be dividing the country. Instead, affirmative action is intended to create-- it's a policy or a set of policies intended to create egalitarian outcomes overall. I think people can recognize that. To the extent that the Republican party attempts to weaponize the issue, you could argue in the same way that Youngkin, a Republican candidate of Virginia, used it in a particular moment on critical race studies in public schools in Virginia. You could argue that that could be done at the local level in some places, but then I think overall, most Americans understand that is overblown and pretty much untrue.

Melissa: I feel a little buoyed by that. I have felt some anxieties around it because there have been, in ways that I guess are distressing and disturbing, but the rise of anti-Asian and anti-Asian American hate crime at the same time as the rise for the movement for Black lives second wave, really felt like there were these just real possibilities of coalition work. I've been anxious about the ways that the affirmative action decision could be weaponized against that collaborative work.

Jane: Well, I think there is hope, but that doesn't only happen organically. Parties, groups, advocacy organizations, civil rights groups. We all need to be involved in working together. It's not as if we necessarily have a common enemy, as much as we have a common set of experiences to understand why we can't just call ourselves Americans. We have to-- it's not necessarily a bad thing, but people who are in the United States are either brought here or came from another place originally, and I'm not talking about Northern Europe, always have to modify our Americanness. We understand what that means.

That combination across all of the different places from which we've come, which basically everybody in the United States is an immigrant but only people who are classified as non-white have to classify themselves as African-American, Mexican-American or Korean-American. We understand what that means, to have a conditional welcome rather than to belong as a function of just who we are as Americans.

I do have hope that we come together to understand that, and that the parties will generate better candidates, whether they're at the local level for Congress, or at the federal level for president, for a politics that speaks to that togetherness. That speaks to trying to go forward rather than look backward at our flaws

Melissa: Jane Junn is the USC associates chair in social sciences, and the professor of political science and gender and sexuality studies at the University of Southern California. Jane, as always, thank you for joining us.

Jane: Delighted to be here. Thank you, Melissa.

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