Asian Americans Are Flocking To Kamala Harris. Why?
By Karthick Ramakrishnan and Sara Sadhwani
Time to read: 5 minutes
Amid predictions of a photo-finish race for president, Asian American voters are poised to play a pivotal role in several swing states, including Georgia, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Michigan.
Kamala Harris’s history-making potential as the first president of Asian or South Asian origin could be a decisive factor in propelling a record number of Asian Americans to the ballot box. New survey findings, however, point to an even bigger factor–the promise of gender representation is turbo-charging voter interest among Asian Americans, and particularly so among Asian American women.
The outsized role of gender representation versus ethnic representation for Asian American voters may seem surprising at first. Kamala Harris’s racial identity has gotten a lot more airtime than her gender identity. Donald Trump drew outsized attention to her Indian heritage in July when he claimed at the National Association of Black Journalists that Harris “was Indian all the way, and all of a sudden…became a Black person.” Social media uproar and news coverage soon followed, with dozens of stories covering her upbringing, the neighborhoods in which she lived, her childhood visits to India, and her time at Howard University. Even today, social media sites like Twitter/X are rife with dubious claims about Harris’s racial identity, and the precise nature of her Jamaican and Indian origins.
Click the image above to read more on our commentary regarding remarks directed toward Harris’ racial identity
By comparison, far less attention has been paid to Harris’s gender as a potentially historic moment for the presidency. This stands in stark contrast to Hillary Clinton’s presidential run in 2016, when gender dominated the identity conversation, from campaign slogans like “I’m With Her,” to convention speeches and news coverage that focused on the “glass-shattering” aspects of her potential presidency. Given the outsized attention to Kamala Harris’s race and the comparatively muted attention to her gender, we would expect racial representation to reign supreme in the minds of Asian American voters who, for the first time, have a major party presidential candidate of Asian origin.
Recent data released by AAPI Data and Asian and Pacific Islander American Vote (APIAVote) indicate that gender representation plays a stronger role than racial representation in shaping voter support for her candidacy. The survey, conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago in September asked respondents, “Thinking specifically about Kamala Harris, how important to you are the following aspects of her identity?” providing choices that included “her identity as an African American,” “her identity as an Asian Indian or South Asian,” “her identity as a woman,” and “her age.”
Given the amount of news coverage and social media engagement around Harris’s racial identity as both Indian and Black, Asian American voters would be expected to give the highest importance to her Indian and South Asian heritage and her African American identities, with gender and age identities far behind. The survey results showed the opposite (see figure below).
The figure above, from the 2024 AAPI Voter Survey, reveals a significant gender gap among AAPI voters in regard to the importance of Harris’ gender identity
Well over a third of Asian American voters (38%) say that Harris’ identity as a woman is “extremely important” or “very important” to them, with significantly smaller proportions indicating the same about her racial identities as Indian/South Asian (25%) and as an African American (24%) or about her age (25%). The findings were not statistically different among Indian American voters, who arguably share even closer ethnic affinity to Harris.
Notably, the “gender boost” in identity representation was driven entirely by the opinions of Asian American women. About a half (49%) of Asian American women said that Harris’s gender was important to them, nearly double the proportion among Asian American men (25%). This gender gap was also noticeable in questions about the importance of having more elected representatives who are women (56% of Asian American women said that this was extremely important or very important to them, when compared to 36% of Asian American men), and about their intention to vote for Harris (72% among Asian American women and 59% among Asian American men).
Importantly, the Harris candidacy has introduced a gender gap among Asian American voters for the first time in recorded polling history, including when compared to the Spring 2024 Asian American Voter Survey, where we found that 47% of Asian American women and 46% of Asian American men said they intended to vote for Biden. Thus, even as Harris improved the Democratic Party’s performance among Asian Americans overall, the gain was disproportionately large among Asian American women. The gender dynamic among Asian American voters since early 2024 is less of a story where Trump is making gains among male voters, but where Harris is making disproportionate gains among female voters.
The gender dynamic among Asian American voters since early 2024 is less of a story where Trump is making gains among male voters, but where Harris is making disproportionate gains among female voters.
We have not seen a similar gender gap in support for Harris among Black voters or a consistent gender gap among Latino voters. In July, Pew Research Center published data that found 2 in 3 Black men and 63% of Black women supported Biden, findings that were within the survey’s margin of error. In September, the Pew data showed that support had increased to 80% among Black men and 87% among Black women, again within the survey’s margin of error. The Pew surveys similarly show insignificant gender gaps for Biden in July and for Harris in September.
Taken together, these survey findings suggest a surprising twist to identity representation. Even as Harris is the first major party presidential candidate of Asian or Indian heritage, it is her gender identity that is drawing outsized interest among Asian American voters. Given the razor-thin margins in swing states where Asian Americans are numerous, this dynamic may be sufficient to deliver her the White House.
Karthick Ramakrishnan is founder and executive director of AAPI Data and researcher at the University of California, Berkeley.
Sara Sadhwani is an assistant professor of political science at Pomona College and a senior researcher at AAPI Data.