By Carolyn Bick
NORTHWEST ASIAN WEEKLY
Ahead of November’s critical election that will decide the country’s direction for the next four years, Asian and Pacific Islander Vote (APIAVote), AAPI Data, and the Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA) presented their collaborative research into Asian American, Native Hawai’ian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) voters, in order to recognize, respect, and make visible the many ways in which they vote, and to help news media and public figures invest in keeping these voters and communities prioritized and informed.
The organizations presented five different surveys carried out throughout 2024. While most survey respondents were from the AAPI community, the surveys also included people from other racial backgrounds.
The first survey focused on the news and trusted sources, including how community members of different ages and backgrounds obtained news, and the level of trust they had in these sources.
The second survey asked respondents how important the media is to democracy, and how well they felt the media did on delivering accurate information.
The third survey examined misinformation and disinformation, and how attitudes towards such things varied by race.
Finally, the fourth and fifth surveys, carried out in September, respectively asked about voter concerns, and candidate strengths, immigration, and views on the Supreme Court.
AAPI Data’s founder and director, Karthik Ramakrishnan, said that there were some key findings that they wanted to highlight in advance of election day. Most AAPI respondents said that they believed the election will be consequential first for the economy, followed closely by health care, immigration, and foreign policy.
A significant percentage of respondents said that Democratic nominee Kamala Harris would be capable of handling a crisis, compared with the percent who said the same of Republican nominee Donald Trump—47% for Harris, versus 26% for Trump. Even more respondents (64%) rated Trump poorly on upholding democratic values, while just 27% said the same of Harris. Ramakrishnan noted that this fell largely along partisan lines.
Harris also fared better than Trump on every single issue of concern, except on crime, where the two were about evenly matched (Harris leading at 39% and Trump at 33%).
APIAVote Executive Director Christine Chen said that the primary concern amongst survey respondents was false or misleading information, followed closely by fears of violence, post-election.
She also highlighted that despite the majority of AAPI respondents rejecting conspiracy theories, “a notable percentage of API voters are still swayed by misinformation.”
“There is a critical need for trusted, accurate information in API communities, whether it’s on WeChat, Kakao, WhatsApp, in these ethnic-specific and language-specific platforms, not to mention more to be done to improve content moderation on social media platforms and improve media literacy among our community members,” Chen said.
She also pointed out that there were “somewhat significant percentages” of respondents expressing uncertainty when presented with statements they were asked to declare true or false, which she said “also suggests that while it is good that there are not necessarily falling for conspiracy theories wholesale, it is clear that trusted, accurate information is still needed.”
The findings Chen presented also showed that most AAPIs distrust social media, but trust the news media for information, a fact AAJA’s executive director, Naomi Tacuyan Underwood, discussed in more depth.
“We found out that more than any other groups, AAPIs still believe that [news media] is critical and or very important to a functioning and healthy democracy, with 76% of AAPIs responding that way compared to 59% of Black respondents, 58% of Hispanic respondents, and 62% of white respondents,” Underwood said. “Television news still plays a very important role, but by only a slim margin, because … the data shows that [AAPI audiences] do do their own research.”
Underwood said that ethnic media is an important source of trusted news, and that AAPIs place great emphasis on visible diversity within newsrooms. Survey findings also showed that 70% of AAPIs closely follow news about things affecting their communities, and that two out of three respondents followed news about the federal government and news out of Washington, D.C.
While fewer respondents followed foreign policy or news in other countries, Underwood noted that “77% of Asian-Indians closely follow news about U.S. foreign policy and 64% follow news about politics in foreign countries.”
Though the surveys revealed that there is a high reliance on news media for information, a majority of respondents did not think the news media is doing a good job of handling misinformation. Similarly, despite a high reliance on television news, just 40% of respondents felt that local television news was improving democracy, compared with public television, like PBS, or public radio, like NPR.
A majority of survey respondents felt that social media, closely followed by cable news, like Fox News, was making democracy worse.
Underwood also said that they discovered there was a need to inform certain age groups, particularly the 18- to 29-year-old age group in communities of color.
“We did a deep dive as well on this age group, because of the fact that these are your current and future consumers of news and audiences of news. It’s a way to look at also how this age group differs significantly from their elders in several ways,” Underwood said. “The data shows that this age group consumes and trusts traditional media less than their elders, and often get it via social media, including significant numbers who get it from TikTok.”
However, she said, “there is still a healthy and significant skepticism across the board.”
“They haven’t necessarily traded in their grandparents, Walter Cronkite, or any prominent anchor of that generation for TikTok influencers or entertainers,” Underwood said. “And most importantly, they haven’t lost interest in the news, particularly with what’s happening in their local communities.”
Finally, Ramakrishnan, Chen, and Underwood shared a variety of resources for news media and community partners to share with the communities they served. APIAVote shared a recently released webpage of comprehensive voter information translated into Bengali, Traditional and Simplified Chinese, Hindi, Punjabi, Korean, Vietnamese, Tagalog, and Urdu. They also shared a toolkit meant to educate AAPI communities about voting and the upcoming election, with links to further resources, while AAJA shared a national list of trusted news sources.
APIAVote also has a voter information hotline, 888-API-VOTE, for which interested community members can volunteer.