Wong and Shah cite a 2016 New York Times article by my news-side colleague Jeremy W. Their answer: “Political differences within the Asian American community are between those who are progressive and those who are even more so.” “Do Asian Americans, a group marked by crosscutting demographic cleavages and distinct settlement histories, constitute a meaningful political category with shared policy views?” ask Janelle Wong, a professor of American studies at the University of Maryland, and Sono Shah, a computer scientist at the Pew Research Center, in their 2021 paper “ Convergence Across Difference: Understanding the Political Ties That Bind with the 2016 National Asian American Survey.” There is little question of the depth of liberal commitments among Asian Americans. The question now is whether this party loyalty will withstand politically divisive developments that appear to pit Asian Americans against other key Democratic constituencies - as controversies emerge, for example, over progressive education policies that show signs of decreasing access to top schools for Asian Americans in order to increase access for Black and Hispanic students. Over the past three decades, Asian American voters - the fastest-growing group in the country according to Pew - have shifted from decisively supporting Republicans to becoming a reliably Democratic bloc, anchored by firmly liberal views on key national issues.
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