The Democratic National Committee rolled out a new multilingual ad campaign aimed at reaching one million Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) voters on Wednesday, continuing its final push to shore up support from the increasingly influential bloc with less than two weeks until Election Day.
The new ads, which direct individuals to the DNC’s IWillVote.com voter participation hub, are part of the organization’s six-figure investment in constituency media and include graphics translated into Chinese, Hindi, Korean, Vietnamese, Telugu and Urdu.
The campaign targets eleven states where AAPI votes might constitute the margin of victory, including battleground states like Florida, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. AAPIs also make up a sizable share of voters in Arizona, California, Nevada, and Texas and face a flurry of last-minute ads from not only the DNC, but outside groups like the New American Voices PAC's Asian Americans Against Trump project as well.
“Democrats are meeting AAPI voters where they are and in the language they speak by making historic investments to ensure AAPIs across the country have the information they need to make their plan to vote,” DNC Chair Tom Perez said in a statement provided to The Yappie. “The stakes have never been higher—especially for AAPI communities—and we are committed to making sure voters have the tools to make their voices heard at the ballot box, and elect leaders like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris who will fight to build a brighter future for AAPI families.”
Starting this week, print and digital ads will blanket a wide array of Asian publications, including established national newspapers like Asian Journal, the Korea Times, the World Journal, and Nguoi Viet. The DNC says it has also placed ads in roughly a dozen local media outlets including Asia Today (Arizona), Metro Chinese Weekly (Pennsylvania), the Hmong Times (Minnesota, Wisconsin, and California), the Filipino Star News (Michigan), and Sathee Magazine (North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida).
Listeners on seven Asian radio stations in Texas, Georgia, and Florida will also hear an ad that says: “We are in the midst of a global pandemic, an economic collapse, and a reckoning on civil rights. We need leaders with a plan to protect and expand our access to affordable health care, invest in our community, and fight for equal justice. Asian Americans have the power to elect those leaders who will represent all Americans.”
A majority of the radio ads will be broadcast in Harris County and Dallas County, two areas that have the highest concentration of AAPI voters in Texas.
Last week, the Biden campaign launched its own ad blitz targeting AAPI voters nationally and in 16 swing states, which included a rare television spot titled “Stand Together.” A spokesperson for the campaign told The Yappie that the paid media campaign was just the beginning and that more ads were planned.
Examples of the DNC's multilingual digital and print ads:
