The Social Roots of Asian American Partisanship - From Political Learning to Partisan Leanings

This book explores how Asian Americans learn about American politics and develop partisan attitudes. Asian Americans are the fastest-growing immigrant group in the US, and are thus the focus of intense interest by both major parties. To explain the historical Asian American support for the Democratic Party and recent shifts in that trend, Tanika Raychaudhuri proposes a theory of "social transmission." She argues that Asian Americans primarily learn about American politics from peers in local contexts--so, many vote for Democrats because they settle in liberal metropolitan areas where they interact with liberal peer groups. Grounded in a range of quantitative and qualitative evidence, including in-depth interviews, national surveys of Asian Americans, and original survey experiments, Raychaudhuri''s analysis presents important implications for understanding political behavior in immigrant communities and the future of American electoral politics.