Democrats target Latin American voters

Having grown up in Georgia, James Woo was never contacted by political campaigns and his home rarely received leaflets or direct mail from candidates. There was only an ethnic market to buy cultural foods. He could count all the other Asian American children in his high school class in Gwinnett County.

Gwinnett is now one of the most racially diverse counties in Georgia, with substantial populations of Asians and Pacific Islanders and Latinos – groups that are growing in the Atlanta metropolitan area and across the state.

Before the crucial second round of the Senate on January 5, which will decide to take control of the upper house, Democrats hope to harness the growing political power of AAPI and Latino voters across Georgia to defeat the incumbent rulers, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, and elect opponents Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock.

Woo is a communications manager and Korean outreach leader for Asian American Advancing Justice-Atlanta, a nonprofit organization that has been working for years to mobilize AAPI voters in Georgia. Advancing Justice-Atlanta and other black community advocacy groups have reached voters that many political campaigns have ignored in the past.

A historic rise in Asian American and Latino voters has helped turn the state blue to President-elect Joe Biden, according to Democratic data firm TargetSmart. Compared to 2016, the total share of AAPI increased by 91%, while the Latin share increased by 72%.

“This kind of participation did not happen overnight,” said Woo. “We have collaborated with other black, brown and immigrant communities and organizations to get them to vote.”

Leaders of AAPI and Latino advocacy groups say continued investment and grassroots organization will be necessary for Democrats to win in January and beyond.

“Party politics in Georgia have long been defined by a racial divide between blacks and whites, and Asian Americans and Latinos obviously do not fit that structure in an elegant way,” said political scientist Bernard Fraga of Emory University.

“They are more persuasive than whites or African Americans, so they are more of an undecided constituency,” said Fraga. “But Asian Americans and Latinos are much closer to being a central Democratic constituency in the state than even suburban white voters.”

According to NBC News polls, 88% of black voters in Georgia supported Biden, while 69% of white voters in the state favored Republican President Donald Trump. Meanwhile, 62% of Georgia’s Latino voters supported Biden and 63% of AAPI voters across the country supported Biden. (AAPI data was not available for Georgia.)

Fraga said that the results of the November elections in Georgia demonstrate a “long-term model for Democrats that does not depend on an ever-diminishing participation of the white vote and is instead engaged and increasing participation rates for Latinos and Asian Americans. “

Asian American and Latino voters accounted for about 3% and 5%, respectively, of Georgia’s eligible voters in 2019, but they are by far the fastest growing segments of the U.S. electorate, according to the Pew Research Center.

“People are, for the first time, realizing that voters of AAPI and Latinx are this growing group of people who have the possibility to change a state in one way or another,” said Gigi Pedraza, executive director of the Latino Community Fund Georgia.

In the highly competitive Senate runoff contests that are likely to come to an end, increasing participation between AAPI voters and Latinos will be the key for Democrats looking to maximize electoral margins.

Georgia’s electoral rules provided for a second round when no candidate exceeded 50% of voter participation in any of the contests during the November 3 election.

After the general election, Ossoff’s campaign hired constituent directors focused on publicizing AAPI and Latinos, according to a campaign spokesman. The Warnock campaign hired an AAPI community coordinator dedicated to political outreach in the summer of 2020 and also has a Latinx polling director and a New Americans coordinator on the team, the campaign told CNBC.

Perdue’s campaign did not respond to CNBC’s request for comment. Loeffler’s campaign was not available for comment prior to the publication of this story.

Historically, turnout for Asian American and Latino voters has declined in the runoff elections compared to black and white voters. As of December 24, more than 2 million people have voted in the Senate’s second rounds. The rate of participation of blacks in the second round is at or above the rate of participation during the November 3 election, while the rate of participation of whites is slightly lower, according to Fraga’s analysis of early voting data. The drop in participation of Latinos and AAPI in the elections is the lowest among racial groups, oscillating between 80-90% of the pace of participation in the general election.

The campaigns, the Democratic Party and advocacy groups are all working to increase the participation of Latin voters and AAPI as January 5 approaches. Before the electoral registration deadline, they helped register new voters. Voto Latino, a national voter registration organization, said it registered 12,000 new voters in Georgia for the second round, in addition to the nearly 36,000 voters the organization registered for the general election.

“We know that this participation will be the biggest problem,” said María Teresa Kumar, president and CEO of Voto Latino. “That’s why we started to register voters again.”

Of the nearly 76,000 new voters registered in Georgia since before the November election, Latin American and Asian American voters represented more than their overall electoral quota, reported the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Language barriers and gaps in civic education are challenges that particularly affect Asian American and Latino voters, many of whom are first-time voters, young people or naturalized citizens. Leaders of AAPI and Latino advocacy groups say that misinformation can spread quickly in their communities, especially on group messaging platforms like WeChat, WhatsApp and KakaoTalk, and sometimes through ethnic media. Asian American and Latino voters are also not monoliths; they cover diverse ethnicities, languages ​​and experiences between different communities.

The groups hope to face these challenges by reaching the multilingual and multicultural voter: door-to-door election campaign, delivery of literature, telephone and text bank, advertisements and press in the ethnic media – with the collective goal of contacting hundreds of thousands of people. voters. During the early voting period and on January 5, advocacy groups are also organizing election protection work and hotlines for multilingual voters.

In recent history, the work of mobilizing voters in these communities of color has been undertaken mainly by local entities. Asian American and Latin organizers cite the work of black organizers to pave the way, especially leaders such as the right-to-vote activist and former Democratic candidate for the Stacey Abrams government, who has collaborated with Latin American groups and AAPI for years.

“We really built our communities in a way that didn’t exist there in the past, so when we talk about why Georgia went blue this year, it’s largely because of the organization that happened in the communities of color over the past few years, said Aisha Yaqoob Mahmood, director of the Asian American Advocacy Fund, a progressive grassroots group focused on AAPIs in Georgia. “In recent years, it has become very clear that, in order to move Georgia forward, investment in black communities would be necessary.”

While Georgians can identify their race when registering to vote, making it easier for organizations to use voter lists to contact key constituents, it can be difficult to reach qualified voters who may not yet have a voting history. Advocacy group leaders say it can be more time-consuming and expensive to campaign in AAPI and Latino neighborhoods, because the high percentage of immigrants means that there is usually a smaller proportion of qualified voters compared to Black and White neighborhoods.

Continuing the momentum in mobilizing Asian American and Latino voters will require continued outreach and building relationships, organizers say. The investment is especially important for the Democratic Party if it wants to solidify AAPI and Latin voters as a central part of its base.

Jen Rafanan, AAPI media director for the Georgia Democratic Party, said in a statement, “We are not taking anything for granted.” Rafanan and Karla Alvarado, media director for Georgia Democrats’ Latinx, said the party is committed to engaging and mobilizing AAPI and Latin communities in the state after the second round.

“We have been struggling every year to get investments,” said Pedraza, of the Latino Community Fund Georgia. “Now everyone is paying attention, which is great … But can you commit to the next five years?”

“Because maybe Georgia will not be sexy next year, and it will be sexy again in 2022 for the governor’s election, but then it will be too late,” said Pedraza. “We need to continue building next year, so we are ready for 2022.”