Asian American Voting Stereotypes

When it comes to Voting participation, those who have a higher socio-economic status are likely to have a higher voter turnout/participation rate. However that is not the case for Asian American voters. With Asian Americans having some of the highest level of income and education, they still result in low voter turnout in general elections. With Asian American political participation being a puzzling phenomena, there are bloc of reasons for their bizarre voting behavior. The reasons for lower turnout rates among the group of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders are due to pan ethnicity, rates of immigration, English proficiency, and lack of representation. To explain more about these factors, it is best to first define “Asian Americans” and
According to the United States Census Bureau, out of the minorities, Asian Americans have the lowest population but have the highest average income of about $70,644 and highest employment rate of about 60.4%. This shows the significance between these minorities but still raises this odd pattern of voting participation among Asian Americans. This is evident by the voter turnout between Asian American and White voters when comparing both by income and education level. Voters who are highly educated are more likely to vote but even the turnout of a majority of high educated Asian American voters still holds up by 23% in comparison to the White voters; trends of median family income are similar as well. Pan ethnicity can pose a great interest but important when it comes to politics. However, it is even more important when it comes to researching Asian American politics. Asian Americans, combined together, still make up a small margin of the population. Unlike the Latino group, Asians do not have the same language nor do they really share the same religions and traditions. Many countries
Anyone born in the United States are a US Citizen automatically however immigrants have to apply and pass the test for a citizenship which usually occurs after a waiting process of about 5 years. With that said, a substantial amount of Asian Americans are not citizens. Legally, non-citizens cannot vote, so groups with a high percentage of non-citizens like Asian Americans will have low voter turnout rates in comparison to groups who have fewer non-citizens. For an immigrant to be able to vote, it involves a long voting process that requires three steps: naturalization, registration, and the third is to actually vote. Immigrants must undergo and pass an interview and test before they can be “naturalized”. Therefore, they must have knowledge of US government and history also must answer questions in English. In the testing, applicants will be required to answer questions about the US such as: Who can veto a bill? What year was the Constitution drafted? The Congress is made of what two parts? What is the name of the first ten amendments of the US Constitution? After passing the first step of naturalization in order to vote, the second step is registration. Both naturalized and US-born citizens follow the same rulings of voter registration but it’s been shown that naturalized citizens do not register as much as