“This could be a game changer,” the report states. “Not only will Asian-Americans be a politically influential voting bloc in select areas, they have the potential to be the margin of victory in critical swing vote states during the next six presidential elections.”
The report was released this month by the University of California, Los Angeles’ Center for the Study of Inequality and the Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies (APAICS). The report offers projections of the Asian-American population to 2040 but focuses on the electorate.
By 2040, nearly 1 in 10 Americans will be of Asian descent, as will 1 in 15 registered voters, according to the report. The number of registered, Asian-American voters by then is predicted to balloon from the current 5.9 million to 12.2 million. If so, Asian-Americans would grow from their current 4 percent share of the total U.S. electorate to 7 percent.
Titled “The Future of Asian America in 2040,” the report is authored by Dr. Paul Ong, a UCLA professor of urban planning, social welfare and Asian-American studies and director of the Center for the Study of Inequality, and Elena Ong, an APAICS consultant. They explored multiple demographic aspects of the pan-Asian electorate.
Today, almost two-thirds of the Asian-American electorate is foreign-born, and they are expected to still constitute the majority of this racial group in 2040. However, the number of U.S.-born Asians is expected to grow at a faster rate during the next quarter-century, and they will make up almost half of the Asian-American electorate by 2040.
The report’s authors say that a significant, generational age gap will exist between the two pan-Asian populations in 2040, when the median age of U.S.-born registered voters will be 37 years old, while that of the naturalized, foreign-born will be 56.
