Light up:Harris leads Trump by almost 40 points among Asian American voters, a new poll shows

Vice President Kamala Harris has a significant lead over former President Donald Trump among Asian Americans, according to a poll conducted earlier this month.

The poll showed that 66% of Asian American voters plan on backing Harris, while 28% say they’ll be voting for Trump. When he was still in the race, President Joe Biden had been losing Asian American voters, dropping roughly 8 points compared to the 2020 presidential election cycle, a previous poll showed. But experts say that Harris has more than reversed that dip.

“People had seen all the Zoom meetings for different Asian American groups for Harris, is that actually materializing in terms of support? … The answer is yes,” Karthick Ramakrishnan, whose nonprofit AAPI Data commissioned the poll with nonprofit Asian and Pacific Islander American Vote. “Harris has essentially restored a lot of the drop in support that Biden experienced.”

Ramakrishan explained that it’s likely that the “energy and vigor” that Harris brought to the election cycle has made a major difference for the racial group.

“Disapproval and favorability for Biden had plummeted quite a bit because they saw a president who did not seem capable of the job for another four years,” Ramakrishnan said. “They see something very different from Harris.”

The poll, released on Tuesday, also showed that while Harris’ race has factored heavily in this election cycle, Asian American voters said that her identity as a woman is more important. Thirty-eight percent of Asian American voters said that her gender identity is “extremely” or “very” important to them. In comparison, 27% said the same about her racial identity as an Indian or South Asian American.

Ramakrishnan said that Harris’ outspokenness around reproductive rights, particularly after the Dobbs decision in 2022, which reversed the federal right to an abortion that was upheld by Roe v. Wade, “made a difference” in placing more weight on her gender identity. But there is also another powerful component for many women voters.