According to a Pew Research report published on May 7, there are approximately 944,000 Korean American eligible voters in the United States. This is the fifth largest of all Asian American ethnic groups, following Chinese American (2,576,000), Filipino American (1,956,000), Indian American (1,861,000), and Vietnamese American (1,291,000) eligible voters. Six ethnic groups – Chinese, Filipino, Indian, Vietnamese, Korean, and Japanese – account for the majority of U.S. Asian American voters, closely mirroring the Asian American population as a whole– the same six ethnic groups make up 85% of all Asian Americans.
Asian Americans are the fastest-growing racial or ethnic group in the U.S. electorate. More than 11 million Asian Americans will be able to vote this year, nearly 5% of the nation’s eligible voters, which more than doubles the 4.6 million (2.4%) Asian American voters in the 2000 Presidential election.
This increase tracks with the rising numbers of naturalized Asian Americans (making them eligible to vote in federal elections), which jumped from 3.3. million to 6.9 million within the past two decades. As of 2018, naturalized citizens accounted for about two-thirds of all Asian American eligible voters.
A 2018 survey by AAPI Data reported finding that 62% of Korean American registered voters responded favorably to the Democratic party, with 32% responding favorably to the Republican party. On the question of party identification, 48% of Korean American registered voters responded Democrat while only 20% responded Republican. Also, 58% of Korean American registered voters agreed that undocumented immigrants should have the opportunity to eventually become U.S. citizens, one of the Korean American policy priorities. The survey’s limitations should be noted, with only 217 Korean Americans participating, but the tendencies of Korean American voter behavior reflected in the survey should not be ignored.
As a non-profit focused on voter registration and education, KAGC has been working to compile and analyze Korean American voter data since late 2018, due to the lack of good voter information for Korean Americans that has not already been lumped into the singular, Asian American bucket. KAGC, at this time, has compiled and analyzed Korean American voter data from CA, NY, NJ, VA, MD, IL, WA and TX, which have the highest Korean American populations of all the states. The analysis contains information on population, eligible voters, registered voters, and registration rate. In the case of registered voters, numbers have been broken down by counties or congressional districts with the highest Korean American population in order to give the best understanding of Korean American voter trends that we can.
Please refer to the original Pew Research Report, KAGC Voter Data, and Korean American Policy Priorities below:
Korean American Policy Priorities