71% Asian-Americans voted for Barack Obama in presidential polls

In the November US presidential elections, an overwhelming majority of Asian-Americans voted for Barack Obama, with only a small number turning up to back the defeated Republican nominee Mitt Romney, a post-poll survey results released has said.

"Seventy one per cent of Asian-Americans voters in 2012 cast their ballot for President Barack Obama, and 28 percent voted for Governor Mitt Romney," said the 'Post-Election Survey of Asian-American Voters in 2012', the largest nationally representative survey of Asian-American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) voters in 2012.

"We estimate that about 3.2 million Asian-Americans cast ballots in November 2012, with about 2.3 million for Barack Obama and 900,000 thousand for Mitt Romney," it said.

"Without the AAPI vote, Obama's popular vote margin would have been 3.3 million. The AAPI vote contributed a net of 1.4 million votes to Obama's popular vote margin, increasing it to about 4.7 million overall," said the Post-Election Survey, which is the only one of its kind to be conducted in nine Asian languages, as well as English and Spanish.

The survey was conducted by the Asian and Pacific Islander American Vote along with Asian-American Justice Center, a member of the Asian-American Center for Advancing Justice, and the National Asian American Survey (NAAS).

In 2012, there was a significant increase in voter mobilization efforts by community organizations; still, most Asian-American voters (65 per cent) report that they received no contact about the election, the report said, adding that among those who were contacted by political parties, contact by Democrats was more frequent than contact by Republicans.

"On issues relevant to Asian American voters, the strongest gaps in support for Obama over Romney were on issues of immigration, racial discrimination, health and environment. The smallest gap was on national security issues," it said.

"Nearly one half of Asian-American registered voters remain independent or undecided with respect to their party identification, pointing to the possibility that many remain open to persuasion and outreach in future elections," it said.

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