Mainstream media analysis of the 2024 election is dominated by the narrative that President Donald Trump shattered Democrats’ multiracial electoral coalition by pulling Black and Hispanic voters away from the Democratic Party in near-record numbers.
That’s partly true, but it doesn’t tell the full story of why Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris fell short last November. As Democrats look for ways to rebuild their fragmented coalition ahead of next year’s crucial midterm elections, they would do well to pay attention to another group that shifted away from the party last year: Asian Americans.
New precinct-level data from election analysis group VoteHub offers an unprecedented look into how AAPI voters shifted away from the party in 2024. With more data at our disposal than ever before, it’s possible to see the concerning trends that could spell trouble for Democrats—even those in “safely” blue states, like New York and California. It’s unclear if party leaders even realize the seismic shift happening under their feet.
And the data is bleak.
Not only did Democrats lose ground with Asian Americans in virtually every metropolitan area in the country, they also lost ground with every Asian ethnic group VoteHub analyzed. The group used modeled data, so the figures below are its best approximations. The data provided to Daily Kos also looks only at head-to-head matchups between Trump and his Democratic opponent, and excludes the results for third-party and independent candidates.
In a head-to-head matchup against Trump, Harris underperformed former President Joe Biden by 9 percentage points among voters with Chinese ancestry, 7 points among Indians, 4 points among Koreans, and a whopping 10 points among Pakistanis. Harris did best among voters with Japanese ancestry but still lagged Biden’s 2020 performance by 1 point.
“Harris lost fewer Asian voters in places like Seattle and Los Angeles with substantial Japanese populations … but even in Los Angeles, we saw a 9-point shift toward Trump among Asian voters,” said Zachary Donnini, a data scientist who helped compile VoteHub’s map. “Many of those Japanese voters are second- or even third-generation, compared to larger shifts among other Asian groups with a higher number of first-generation immigrants, who swung more to Trump last year.”
The numbers get worse when you drill down into regions once considered to be Democratic strongholds. In the area comprising New York City, Newark, and Jersey City, Asian American voters’ support for Harris fell nearly 13 points from their support for Biden.
In the Dallas-Fort Worth area, Harris performed over 8 points worse than Biden among Asian American voters. In the San Francisco area and Washington, D.C., areas, it was about 7 points worse.
Taken together, in the 10 metropolitan areas with the highest number of votes cast by Asian Americans, Harris underperformed Biden by 7 points on average with those voters.
“Trump has done a great job destroying the Obama-era multiracial, working-class coalition,” Donnini said. “What we’re seeing in places like New York and San Francisco and other cities is that working-class Asian American voters are part of that same trend, in some cases much more than other groups.”
That puts Democrats in a bind. The party’s 2024 message to Asian Americans focused on Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric and on Harris’ historic role as the first Asian American nominee for president while ducking controversial issues like crime, immigration, and economic uncertainty. Those were major issues for many Asian American voters, much like they were for the broader electorate.
As VoteHub’s data makes clear, that sounded to many Asian American voters like Democrats refusing to acknowledge real concerns—with Trump rushing to fill the void.
Democrats are rapidly moving away from their traditional power base of working-class families, in favor of wealthier, college-educated young people in city centers and suburbs. It isn’t clear their new coalition has the heft necessary to put their candidates over the top in national races, especially as the MAGA movement dismantles the wide coalition that delivered key victories for former President Barack Obama.
If Republicans can hold or grow their gains among Asian American voters, Democrats may well face an uphill climb to retake the White House in 2028. To win, the party will need to start addressing the kitchen-table issues that Asian American communities have long listed as their top concerns. It will be a long road back.
Democrats’ multiracial coalition sent the message in 2024 that they are done being taken for granted by politicians who ask for their support. But those politicians can win them back by trying something new: listening to what voters say they want.
