Some Democrats want their party to focus on winning back Asian American voters after they swung toward President Donald Trump in 2024. A new poll out of Texas may help their case.
The October poll, conducted by a University of California-San Diego pollster and commissioned by the left-leaning Asian Americans Texas Action Fund, found Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico leading GOP nominee Ken Paxton by nearly 17 points with Asian American and Pacific Islander voters. But, in the closing stretch of the midterms, the vast majority of respondents said they hadn’t seen direct engagement from either campaign.
More than 70% of Asian American voters said they hadn’t been directly contacted by the Talarico campaign, and 81% said they hadn’t been contacted by Paxton’s campaign, according to the findings, obtained by POLITICO.
“After this season in Texas, it'll be undeniable that Asian Americans are that margin of victory electorate that all campaigns need to pay attention to,” said Stephanie Cho, the executive director of Asian Americans Texas Action Fund.
Texas has been hit particularly hard by the Trump administration’s immigration agenda and the economic turmoil of rising prices. GOP statewide candidate Bo French’s xenophobic post about a group of Asian American students attending a University of Texas football game also thrust racial politics back into the spotlight.
Democrats have focused on making inroads with Hispanic voters that moved right in 2024: Counties that were more than 25 percent Hispanic swung toward Trump by 10 points compared to the previous presidential election, according to a New York Times analysis. But data shows Asian Americans have similarly slipped away from Democrats. Exit polls show Asian American voters swung toward Trump by 12 points, from 2020 to 2024.
Lawmakers, including Democratic Sens. Andy Kim (N.J.) and Tammy Duckworth (Ill.) have hit the campaign trail for various candidates, hoping to energize AAPI communities.
Kim, who appeared at an event for Talarico in September, told POLITICO at the time that AAPI voters “don’t feel like they’re being courted, or being targeted, or being sought after.”
“We started to take the Asian Americans for granted and did not understand some of the divisions that occur within the community,” Duckworth said in an interview. Earlier this month, she was in Atlanta holding a forum about the importance of the Asian American vote with Sen. Jon Ossoff and a fundraiser for AAPI Victory Fund, a PAC that boosts Asian American candidates.
The new poll, which surveyed 1,242 registered AAPI voters from Oct. 4 to 13 and had a margin of error of 3 percentage points, also found that two-thirds of respondents think Talarico needs to do more to earn their vote — that’s virtually unchanged from the percentage who said this back in June. The numbers are worse for Paxton, with nearly 77% of voters saying the Republican needs to do more to earn their vote, a 7-point increase from June.
Talarico’s campaign spokesperson JT Ennis said in a statement that Talarico “has fought tirelessly for Texas’ AAPI community in the Texas House, and will build on that record in the U.S. Senate.”
“He has spoken out against anti-Asian and Islamophobic hate, celebrated cultural events and hosted community engagements with AAPI Texans, and is endorsed by AAPI candidates across Texas,” Ennis said.
A spokesperson for Paxton didn’t respond to a request for comment.
