Asian American Politics and Electoral Participation: A Study of Asian American Presidential Voting
Open Access
Author:
Sulvetta, Daniel L
Area of Honors:
Political Science
Degree:
Bachelor of Arts
Document Type:
Thesis
Thesis Supervisors:
Susan Welch, Thesis Supervisor Dr. Michael Barth Berkman, Thesis Honors Advisor
Keywords:
Asian Americans Voting Presidential Elections
Abstract:
This paper begins with a theoretical discussion and literature review of Asian American politics and participation. It includes a general survey of Asian American population including demographic and geographic information as well as information concerning factors that influence their level political engagement. This paper hypothesizes that Asian Americans with higher levels of community socialization will tend to vote for the Democratic Party while those with lower levels will vote Republican. Furthermore, lower levels of authoritarianism of Asian Americans’ ethnic homeland will lead to Asian Americans voting more Democratic, while higher levels of authoritarianism will influence them to vote more Republican. The analysis uses the 2000 Pilot National Asian American Survey as well as Polity IV data reporting information on the level of democracy for all independent states with greater than 500,000 total population. Multiple Regression analysis is performed to determine if the dependent variable, Asian American vote in presidential elections, is influenced by two independent variables: community socialization (or acculturation), which I operationalize as the use of English in the home, and the level of authoritarianism of Asian American’s ethnic homeland, which I operationalize as their Polity IV score.