Posted on 11/18/2009 2:14:25 AM PST by cold start
Asian voters switching to Republicans?
Prowling through the election returns in the governor races two weeks ago, I was surprised to find that Middlesex County, New Jersey, voted for Republican Chris Christie over Democratic incumbent Jon Corzine by a 48%-44% margin, almost exactly the same as Christie’s 49%-45% statewide margin. Middlesex County has been a Democratic county for as long as I have been studying election returns (going back to the 1960 election). In close elections it voted 58%-42% for John Kennedy in 1960, 46%-43% for Hubert Humphrey in 1968 (when he failed to carry New Jersey), 51%-47% for Jimmy Carter in 1976, 46%-38% and 56%-32% for Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996, 60%-36% for Al Gore in 2000, 56%-43% for John Kerry in 2004 and 60%-39% for Barack Obama in 2008. Historically it was a white working class county, with old industrial cities like Perth Amboy and New Brunswick; its county Democratic leader was often the major Democratic power broker in state politics. You know the territory if you’ve ever driven through the intersection of the New Jersey Turnpike and the Garden State Parkway.
Yet it voted for Christie over Corzine. As I drilled down in http://www.nj.com/politics/map/ the election results by city, borough and township, I saw that Christie carried Woodbridge Township by a 51%-42% margin and Edison Township by 49%-45% margin. These are the largest jurisdictions in the county, with about 100,000 people apiece, and Woodbridge was the political base of Jim McGreevey, who was elected governor in 2001 and resigned in 2004 after it was revealed that he had made his male lover head of the state homeland security department. Then I recalled that Middlesex County these days has an unusually large percentage of residents, 18%, who classify themselves to the Census Bureau as Asian. That’s one of the highest figures outside Hawaii and the San Francisco Bay area. And according to these figures from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey Edison township’s population is 36% “Asian only,” as compared to 49% “white only” and 7% Hispanic, while. Woodbridge township’s population is 19% “Asian only,” as compared to 66% “white only” and 15% Hispanics. The two township’s “black only” percentages are 10% and 9%. In other words, Asians are the largest and most visible minority in Edison and Woodbridge Townships—and are apparently largely of one source, Edison in 2000 had the highest percentage of Indian-ancestry residents, 18%, of any jurisdiction with more than 1,000 Indian-ancestry residents in the nation. Following it on the list were Iselin (part of Woodbridge Township), Plainsboro Township (in southern Middlesex County, adjacent to Princeton), Dayton (a part of South Brunswick Township in Middlesex County) and Avenel (part of Woodbridge Township).
What I think we are looking at is an upscale Indian cluster, around the pharmaceutical, scientific and technical firms in central New Jersey. These people appear to be upscale demographically; the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey reports that Middlesex County foreign-born residents (48% of whom are Asian, 26% Hispanic and 6% black) have a higher percentage of over-$75,000 earners than Middlesex County native-born residents, a higher percentage in management and professional occupations, a lower percentage of people in poverty, higher mean earnings, and nearly twice as high a percentage with graduate degrees and more likely to be in married couple families.
All this evidence strongly suggests that Republicans made gains and Democrats suffered significant losses among Asian, and specifically among Indian-American voters, in Middlesex County. This upscale group, ready enough to vote for John Kerry in 2004 and Barack Obama in 2008, seems to have been repelled by New Jersey’s high taxes and big government under Jon Corzine. There should be some lessons here for Republicans generally—and for Democrats as well.
A couple of additional notes. By my count (subject to arithmetic error) New Jersey’s 7th congressional district, which includes Woodbridge Township and much of Edison Township, voted 56%-36% for Christie over Corzine—a sharp reversal of its 50%-49% preference for Obama over McCain in 2008. The Democratic Congressional Committee is running ads against its Republican Congressman, Leonard Lance, elected in 2008, for voting against the House Democrats’ health care bill; the results in the gubernatorial race suggest this is wasted effort and might even be counterproductive.
Plus, down in Virginia, Fairfax County, which is 16% “Asian only” and which like Middlesex County voted 60%-39% for Barack Obama, voted 51%-49% for Republican Governor-elect Bob McDonnell. McDonnell campaigned heavily in Fairfax’s immigrant communities and clearly made some inroads there.
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/results/polls.main/, Nationally, Asian voters went 62%-35% for Barack Obama over John McCain in 2008, a number boosted by the fact that Obama carried Hawaii Asians, who make up 30% of the state’s electorate, by a 68%-30% margin. But the election results in Middlesex and Fairfax Counties for 2009, with economic issues playing a greater and different role than they did in 2008, suggest that Republicans can make significant gains among this growing segment of the electorate.
When the Dems start really ramping up federal government discrimination (jobs, education, grants, loans) against Whites and Asians, in favor of African Americans and Latinos, and secondly in the case of the Indians, as Obongo saddles up closer and closer to Pokkeestahn and the Crescent Moon and Star, why of COURSE they are going to dump him vast numbers.
Also, a lot of those Asians fled brutal Communist countries in the mid and late 1970s, like Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Red China, so it is also a given the more his Bolshevism shows at home and abroad, they are not in large measure going to have any stomach for it. It is a great political sub market to appeal to in 2010 and 2012 IMHO, although no need to pander condescendingly like the Democrat; this segment of the population are very pro-family and pro-business, are slim and in good shape from self-discipline, diet and metabolism, so they are tired of taking care of the medical costs of overweight Americans through Socialist Obamacare, they already speak English for the most part, and hard-working, and most have come to the USA to really add something rather than just leech at hospitals and county welfare agencies. They sound like natural conservative Republicans to me already. I think so many of them are Americans First, so we can also drop the hyphenated business, too, and be One for a change.
Discrimination against Asians and Jews is defacto official policy, and has been for decades and the Republicans have not made inroads in the Jewish community. (Whats the matter with Scarsdale?)
I suspect people are more likely to vote their resentments than their interests.
People turn out in DROVES when they are angry about something. I suspect they will have plenty to be angry about by next year and 2012. (the latter if we STILL have free elections).
Personally, I find it highly ironic that so very, very many Asians come to the USA fleeing communist/socialist regimes, and then vote for collectivist tickets of Democrats. What’s up with that; don’t they ‘get it’?
I am certain this is happening. They work too hard and are too smart to see their money being taken by a bunch of dummies.
The Indians I work with (IT functions, mostly) are notoriously Democrat. Emigrating brown peoples seem to naturally gravitate to the Democrat party, since it already has a large “minority” membership.
However, once they start paying taxes and begin to see the socialism and set-asides that are rampant in India, they begin to realign themselves.
1997 NJ Governor -- Whitman (R) + 1.05%
1993 NJ Governor -- Whitman (R) + 1.04%
I thought Whitman was considered quite popular for a New Jersey Republican. The much larger margin that Christie won by came from somewhere.
What a difference just one year can make!
I did business with a lot of Indian transplants in Los Angeles. They are highly educated, hard working and Democrats ;-) Maybe some in the next generation will switch. I don’t get it. I think your idea of courting them is a sound one.
Many of them are brought up with ideas taught from first grade, that their home countries are poor not because of communism/socialism, but because of colonial exploitation over centuries. These ideas are nonsensical, but this is what they are taught, and this is what their societies believe. They were also taught that Western countries are rich only because they exploited their colonies. Again, patently nonsensical ideas, but this is what they believe. The reason most come here is not out of some yearning for freedom, but because whatever quasi-religious ideologies/indoctrination they subscribe to, it is clear that American salaries are far higher than in most communist/socialist Asian countries; they hear about those salaries from those of their compatriots already here, and they see the reality of these wages from the steady stream of American TV programs and movies they watch.
VERY good analysis.
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