PI: Michael Omi Co-PI: Naomi Hsu Institution: University of California, Berkeley
This research examines the factors that contribute to the voting gap between socioeconomically comparable Asian and white citizens, focusing on the effects of local-level political context. The project will investigate whether California counties with more extensive voter registration and education resources and efforts, and those with greater presence of Asian Americans in elected office, have lower levels of Asian American under-voting. Findings from this study will be used to incorporate a political contextual perspective into theories of assimilation and political participation in the U.S.
Broader Impacts: The project has the potential to enhance democratic participation in the U.S. by providing insight on how to improve levels of voting among Asian Americans who comprise one of the fastest-growing segments of the American population.
Conventional sociological theories of assimilation view political integration as occurring in step with socioeconomic integration, and traditional political theories of voting emphasize socioeconomic determinants of participation. Yet, in spite of high levels of socioeconomic attainment and high rates of citizenship acquisition, Asian Americans have extraordinarily low rates of voting, a pattern which stems primarily from non-registration. Much of the empirical work on Asian American electoral underparticipation has focused on demonstrating the existence of the phenomenon—including its persistence into the second and third-plus generations of Asian Americans—rather than on systematically investigating its sources. Using pooled CPS Voter Supplement data, I have found that dramatic differences exist in the net size of the Asian-white voter registration gap across counties in California with sizeable Asian American populations, and that these differences cannot be explained by differences in the ethnic and immigrant attributes of the Asian American population across counties. These findings suggest that local contextual conditions may be important in explaining electoral underparticipation among Asian Americans. Interviews with individuals who are familiar with Asian American communities indicate that outreach and mobilization efforts are not consistent across localities and sub-groups. Further research is needed to elucidate the conditions under which outreach and mobilization occurs.
