AAPI Nexus: Policy, Practice and Community

The 01/01/2008 election was a milestone in the emergence of Asian Americans as a factor in American politics, with national television news networks openly discussing and analyzing California’s Asian American voters. Most mainstream analysis, however, had very little in-depth understanding of the population. This essay provides some insights into the absolute and relative size of the Asian American population, along with key demographic characteristics, their participation in electoral politics, some of the barriers the encounter, and future prospects. The brief is based on analyzing the most recently available data, the 2006 American Community Survey (ACS) and the 2006 November Current Population Survey (CPS). This analysis builds on a previous analytical brief which examined the emergence of Asian Americans as California politics’ new “sleeping giant,” a term that was applied to Hispanics in the 1980s and 1990s because of their rapid growing numbers.