By DAVID OLSON, OC Register
A new poll, one of the first to use languages other than English to track attitudes among Asian American voters in California, found unexpectedly strong support for affirmative action, among other trends.
Voting booths. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)
In all, nearly seven out of 10 (69 percent) of Asian American voters in California support affirmative action.
The result is viewed as surprising because a recent push to revive affirmative action in school admissions died in legislation after opposition from Asian American groups.
The Field Poll of 1,280 voters, paid for by a $35,000 grant from UC Riverside, also showed that Vietnamese Americans are trending less conservative than they have in the past and that Asian American voters overall are less likely than other voting groups to respond to pollsters.
The nonpartisan poll, released earlier this month, is one of the biggest ever to survey Asian American voters, and among the first to use languages other than English to track opinions. Interviews were conducted in Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean and Vietnamese as well as English.
Karthick Ramakrishnan, a professor of public policy and political science at UCR and director of the National Asian American Survey, said it’s vital to collect reliable data on the opinions of California’s Asian Americans, who comprise 13.4 percent of the state’s residents and more than 10 percent of its electorate.
“If we don’t, we don’t have an accurate picture of California voters,” Ramakrishnan said.
An analysis of Asian American attitudes on key issues in the Field Poll – including specific findings for voters of Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese ancestry – was released early Thursday.
Among the key results:
• Sixty-nine percent of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders support affirmative action in jobs and education.
• Asian Americans were more likely to not give their opinions on a range of questions than Latinos, whites or African Americans.
• Vietnamese American voters, who in the past were among the most conservative Asian American voters, were more likely than people of Chinese or Korean ancestry to approve of the job President Barack Obama is doing and to back affirmative action.
Affirmative action in state government institutions has been illegal in California since voters approved a ban in 1996. In January, the state Senate voted to put a constitutional amendment on the November ballot to repeal part of that initiative and allow public colleges and universities to consider race, ethnicity and gender as factors in admissions decisions.
But some Asian American organizations, grass-roots activists and Chinese-language newspapers mobilized against the bill and were a key reason the bill never came to a vote in the Assembly.
Karin Wang, vice president of programs and communications for Los Angeles-based Asian Americans Advancing Justice, said the poll’s finding that nearly 7 in 10 Asian American voters support affirmative action is consistent with years of surveys that show majority backing among Asians for affirmative action.
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