The Times has just published a series of maps and charts focusing on New York City neighborhoods where most eligible voters are of Asian descent, including Sunset Park, Flushing and Manhattan’s Chinatown. Jason told me that he had started thinking about this subject after his father, who rarely talks about politics, said that he had voted for Zeldin. Later, Jason saw a post-election map of New York and was shocked to see that some of the Chinatown neighborhoods where he grew up were colored red.
As Aminta Kilawan-Narine, a community activist who was raised in South Richmond Hill, which is home to a large Indian American population, told Jason, “I’ve never seen so many signs for a Republican governor in the areas I grew up in.” She was one of the local leaders, academic researchers and political officials whom Jason interviewed, and he heard a few points repeatedly from those experts:
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Republican campaigns have recently increased their outreach to Asian voters, while Democratic candidates had grown complacent.
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Education issues hurt Democrats. Asian voters have been unhappy with proposals to change the rules for magnet high schools like Stuyvesant that admit children based on test scores. Many students at those schools come from lower-income Asian families.
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Perhaps most important, the Republicans’ anti-crime message resonated, following increases in both citywide crime and anti-Asian violence. Lester Chang, a military veteran and a new Republican member of the New York State Assembly, said that the overwhelming reason he won a Brooklyn district — beating a Democratic incumbent who had held the seat for 36 years — was crime.
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Asian Americans are politically diverse. The most heavily Democratic groups include those of Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Arab descent. The least Democratic group is Vietnamese Americans, followed by Korean, Cambodian and Filipino Americans.
Upscale Democrats
Nationally, the rightward drift of Asian voters is connected to a new…
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