Sarah Poontong, 49, became a citizen late last year and one of the first things she did was register to vote.
She’s part of a notable trend — Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders have had the largest increase in voter registration of any racial group in the country from January to June, compared to the same period during the 2020 election cycle. That’s according to analysis first shared with NBC News from the civic engagement nonprofit APIAVote and the research company TargetSmart.
Experts say the gains can be attributed to the increasing numbers of first-generation immigrants who are getting naturalized, and more young U.S.-born Asian Americans who have come of age, as well as greater efforts to get out the vote. From 1960 to 2019, there was a 29-fold increase in immigrants from Asia coming to the U.S. And the group was more likely than the overall foreign-born population to get naturalized. Since 2020, the racial group has represented the fastest-growing segment of eligible voters.
That’s true for Poontong. She said she felt that as an Asian immigrant from Thailand and daughter of factory workers, big ticket issues often excluded her. She said it felt as though her vote didn’t count, so she never cast one. But after the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, Poontong said she couldn’t sit back any longer.
“I realized just how important it is to vote in your local elections and the presidential election,” Poontong, who lives in Chicago and works in operations and finance, said. “So I made the conscious choice to get my citizenship and register to vote, and I voted for the first time in the primaries.”
Christine Chen, executive director of APIAVote, said the gains can be attributed to not only a growing population that has come of voting age, but also to the political momentum and activism against anti-Asian hate that galvanized the Asian American community during the last election and at the height of the…
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