Young Asian-Americans played major role in bolstering a critical voting bloc in 2020

Voter turnout in the United States was up across the board last year, despite the coronavirus pandemic’s impact on the election, and Asian-Americans played a key role in bolstering civic engagement.

An analysis, released recently by the Centre for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University, found that young Asian-Americans had one of the largest increases in voter participation last year of any racial or ethnic group.

Despite a lack of outreach from political campaigns, young Asian-American voters were still highly motivated to turn out at the polls by concerns about the coronavirus and racial injustice, the research found.

Roughly 47 per cent of Asian-American voters under 30 cast a ballot in last year’s election, according to CIRCLE’s analysis. This turnout was higher than young Black voters (43 per cent), but slightly lower than Latino youth (48 per cent). White voters had the highest youth turnout at 61 per cent.

When choosing how to vote last year, most Asian youth opted to mail their ballot (46 per cent) or return it via drop box (21 per cent). The remaining third chose to vote in person either early or on election day. Their preference for voting by mail may be tied to population centres: Nearly one-half of all Asian-Americans live in the western US, where more states proactively used postal votes.