Sign up here to receive The Yappie’s weekly briefing on Asian American + Pacific Islander politics and support our work by making a donation.
Iowa had largely been written off as a red state this election given former president Donald Trump’s consistent lead in polls. Days before the election, however, Vice President Kamala Harris surged to overtake him in a new Des Moines Register/Mediacom poll 47% to 44% among likely voters.
The findings revealed that women—particularly those who are older—are leading the last-minute surge for Haris.
Although Iowa has a reputation of being a swing state, it mainly voted Democratic until 2016, when Trump won the state by over 9 percentage points and won again by 8 in 2020.
Voter demographics
Iowa, also referred to as the food capital of the world, is a powerhouse of agricultural production and holds six electoral votes. It’s the 20th least populated U.S. state with 3.2 million residents, per the latest census data.
Of the 110,179 AAPIs in Iowa, 51,381 are eligible AAPI voters. This group makes up about 2.1% of the state’s electorate, according to the APIAVote, and grew 45.6% from 2012 to 2022.
The majority of Iowa’s Asian population entered the U.S. after 1990, according to census data. The community is heavily comprised of Southeast Asian refugees who relocated post-Vietnam War.
The state is currently in the middle of a legal dispute over a 2002 law that mandates English-only voting materials.
In their campaigns
- Trump focused on more competitive states after handily winning the Iowa caucuses but took to Truth Social this past week to respond to the latest poll’s shock finding and deny its validity.
- “No President has done more for FARMERS, and the Great State of Iowa, than Donald J. Trump,” he wrote. “In fact, it’s not even close!”
- While Harris has also prioritized other states in her campaign tours, the state’s Democratic officials told the New York Times’ Reid J. Epstein and Nicholas Nehamas that opposition to the six-week abortion ban, which took effect in Iowa this summer, activated voters and that it’s a “a palpably more positive environment for Democrats,” compared to two or four years ago.
- 79% of AAPI adults say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, compared to 64% of the general public, according to a March AAPI Data/AP-NORC survey. Support for reproductive rights is demonstrable across Asian ethnic groups.
- 75% also support Congress passing a law to guarantee access to abortion nationwide, compared to 60% of overall U.S. adults.
On the ground
APIAVote, a national organization that advocates for AAPI civic participation, sent voting guides in Vietnamese and Burmese to voters in Iowa. Community groups like the Iowa Asian Alliance, have also encouraged residents to vote and pointed to APIAVote for additional resources and bilingual assistance.
A federal judge recently declined to stop Iowa from challenging the validity of hundreds of ballots from potential noncitizens, which critics say could disenfranchise recently naturalized voters.
Of note: Back in 2019, the Iowa-based political action committee Asian and Latino Coalition, endorsed Harris, then a U.S. senator, as the Democratic presidential candidate. As the state’s only Democratic race-based PAC, the coalition was known for hosting regular town halls with presidential candidates and its stamp of approval helped catapult individuals to prominence.
“Definitely she has a strong background in law and knows a lot about what to change in order to bring equality,” Asian and Latino Coalition chair Prakash Kopparapu told NBC News at the time. (The organization now appears to be inactive.)
The Yappie is your must-read briefing on AAPI power, politics, and influence, fiscally sponsored by the Asian American Journalists Association. Make a donation, subscribe, and follow us on Twitter (@theyappie). Send tips and feedback to editors@theyappie.com.
