The first question to ask is how different do Asian American voters in “blue states” vote compared to Asian American voters in “red states?” I’d put money down on the guess that there really isn’t much of a difference.

latinos in texas tend to be more conservative than latinos in california, so i'd bet against you.

Michigan Proposal 2: … three in four Asian American voters voted No to Proposal 2, which seeks to end race- and gender-based affirmative action programs in education, hiring, contracting, and health initiatives. More than 300 Asian American voters—including Arab Americans—participated in AALDEF’s exit poll survey in Michigan. Proposal 2 passed by a wide margin, 58% to 42% .

thank god for white people.

Of course, the primary problem with polling is that people aren't always honest. When polled, especially in person, there is some tendency to be pressured to give the `right' answer. This increases the amount of error, but I don't know by how much. It will take time before groups like the APIA and AALDEF can put together a thorough analysis on the 2006 election and any voting trends that may or may not exist.

The first question to ask is how different do Asian American voters in “blue states” vote compared to Asian American voters in “red states?”

My impression is that although many Asian Americans in `red states' may still lean Democrat, they are probably less blue than those in places such as New York. Take Sugarland, Texas, a suburb of Houston, as an example: according to the 2000 census it is 25% Asian. Nonetheless, it is considered to be strongly Republican territory.

I think it would be more informative to stratify along different Asian groups, occupation, age, and income and then look at the numbers. Sure, as a group Asian Americans tend to vote democrat but the percentages, I bet, will be a lot different among e.g. Indian physicians and businessmen/women versus academics, small business owners etc. I know plenty of Indian physicians or corporate people that vote Republican.

Folks - this constant makaka selfpatting and election news posts is getting boring.

When do you expect normal programming will resume on Sepiamutiny?

true dat

When do you expect normal programming will resume on Sepiamutiny?

Heheh I was thinking the same thing. I've ODd on Allen and the Elections and the Dems taking over and I'm tired. I had a dream about Allen and Lieberman the other day enough said! Can we get something frivilous for a Friday like the infamous Booda Call that is making the rounds of the internet? My amazement isn't at the actual amaturish trollish call but the stupid people who actually believe it's real and can't tell from the fake accent and the non Indian accent!

Sorry all but this is normal programming. If you don't like it you know what you can do :)

i guarantee that if there was no election posting some people would be like, 'how come you don't post on serious stuff? there's democracy in action going on...blah, blah.'

It took an election to kill the identity wars of last week. Future identity posts should be around November, every 2 years.

Sorry all but this is normal programming. If you don't like it you know what you can do :)

Amen! I love Abhi's political posts. In fact, I think we need more! (which kind of reiterates the point made by GK in #8)

How about an exit poll of the macacas who read SM!

This macaca demands an SM EXIT POLL (Raises fist, looks around to unionize all the readers against SM so that the readers can be better represented)

Waitwaitwait - Arabic was counted as an Asian language? Odd. It's not at all related. I mean, it's still interesting to see how "browns" voted, of course, but that's a fairly glaring oddity.

New Jersey Senate: In this heated Senate race, among more than 370 Asian Americans polled, 77% voted for incumbent Sen. Robert Menendez, while 20% voted for Republican challenger Thomas Kean Jr.—a 57-point margin. 3% of Asian Americans polled voted for other candidates. Among all New Jersey voters, Menendez held his seat by an 8-point margin (53% to 45%).

I voted in NJ and wrote in for Thomas Friedman. I think he lives in NJ. Menendez was too establishment for my taste and I thought Kean was too green.

Waitwaitwait - Arabic was counted as an Asian language? Odd. It's not at all related. I mean, it's still interesting to see how "browns" voted, of course, but that's a fairly glaring oddity.

I'm curious if anyone knows the background behind the actual polling. Do these people just stand outside the polls and wait for their "target group" (perhaps a bad choice of words when dealing with S. Asians...) to emerge and then pounce on them with questions? Do they have to have preapproval from the state election commissions of their respective states and have some form of ID? Are the other officials running each precincts usually cool with these folks hanging around?

The reason I ask is whenever I've voted in person (3x versus the rest absentee), I've never seen anyone outside (or even inside, for that matter) look like they are pollsters, etc., i.e., non-precinct volunteers.

JOAT

That was hilarious. Those are the signs of assimilation ;).

Ashvin - I know that desi intellectuals like to refer to the Middle East as West Asia, and arguably we have more in common with the Arab and Persian cultures than with those of China and Japan (about a quarter of everyday Hindustani words are Arabic, as I discovered when I studied the language!) but still. I'm curious about this classification, and wondered why they chose to do it this way.

I'm curious if anyone knows the background behind the actual polling. Do these people just stand outside the polls and wait for their "target group" (perhaps a bad choice of words when dealing with S. Asians...) to emerge and then pounce on them with questions? Do they have to have preapproval from the state election commissions of their respective states and have some form of ID? Are the other officials running each precincts usually cool with these folks hanging around?

The reason I ask is whenever I've voted in person (3x versus the rest absentee), I've never seen anyone outside (or even inside, for that matter) look like they are pollsters, etc., i.e., non-precinct volunteers.

No Desh:
I can answer that, if anyone's still reading this thread.

I volunteered with AALDEF to exit-poll in NYC (specifically in Kensington, Brooklyn, where there are Pakistanis, Banglas, and Chinese folk).

And the method is exactly as you described it: we stood outside the polling place (in my case, the polling stations were set up in the gym of a school and the AALDEF volunteers stood in the lobby) and waited for our "target group" to arrive and then we pounced. And so sometimes there were questions among the exit-pollsters as to whether someone was Asian or not. Indeed, one of the ethnicity options on the form was "Latino" because apparently this mistake is made sometimes.

The exit-pollsters would politely ask Asian-looking people if they'd like to "participate in an Asian American voting survey" and then usually we'd have to explain who we were and why we were there. If they agreed to particpate, we handed them a form to fill out; at my site, we had forms in English, Urdu, Bengali, and Mandarin. 50% participation was pretty standard.

The agency sponsoring exit-pollsters does have to get approval from the Board of Elections, which AALDEF and its coalition-partners did, and I haven't heard anything about poll workers being unhappy about the exit-pollsters presence, especially as the latter aren't allowed into the actual polling area.

Regarding your not having ever seen exit-polling taking place: I've only voted absentee, so I haven't experienced it either. It probably depends on where you're voting; I would assume that exit-polling is much more common (among the major media networks, for example) in swing districts where elections are actually in contention, as opposed to in good ol' NYC.