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[WASHINGTON POST] Did Asian Americans switch political parties overnight? No.

November 12, 2014
Candidates Young Kim, fifth from left, and Michelle Park Steel, second from right, celebrate after their general election victories Tuesday night. (Park Sang-hyuk/The Korea Times)

Candidates Young Kim, fifth from left, and Michelle Park Steel, second from right, celebrate after their general election victories Tuesday night. They are both Republicans. (Park Sang-hyuk/The Korea Times)

[THE WASHINGTON POST]  Buried in the blue and red bars of the exit poll results from Tuesday’s midterm elections is an astonishing figure. Asian Americans were nearly evenly split in their voting in congressional races: 50 percent to 49 percent, with a nod to Democrats by the faintest of recordable margins.

Why is this astonishing? Because just two years ago, exit polling showed that Asian Americans broke overwhelmingly in favor of the Democrats — 73 percent to 26 percent.

Such a reversal of partisan fortunes is all the more astonishing given the long-term increase in Democratic voting among Asian Americans — only 31 percent of whom voted for Bill Clinton in 1992.

No wonder, then, that there already are headlines such as “Republicans Courted Asians, and It Paid Off.”

Is this 50 percent figure believable? Exit polls, after all, are known for the occasional bad calls, sometimes with decisive and notorious effect, as in the 2000 and 2002 elections. But are exit polls especially prone to getting the Asian American vote wrong? The answer is a clear, resounding “yes.” [READ MORE]