Effect of Living in an AAPI Ethnic Enclave on AAPI Voter Registration

Abstract

Due to the rapidly increasing immigrant population in the United States, particularly among AAPI individuals, more AAPI immigrants are beginning to choose to live in ethnic enclaves. Past research concludes that the ethnic makeup of a certain location can affect how often the residents of that location register to vote. This study was conducted to explore the effect of AAPI ethnic enclaves on AAPI voter registration. This study is quantitative in nature and the data was collected from available data on the voter registration of counties across the United States that contain ethnic enclaves. This paper identifies the percentage of AAPI people that turned out to vote in each enclave as compared to the surrounding counties with no ethnic enclave, in order to analyze the differences in AAPI voter registration in the enclave compared to outside of the enclave. To minimize the scope of the research, case studies were designated to compare them to other neighboring counties that did not have AAPI ethnic enclaves and observe the voting patterns between AAPI residents that were living in close proximity and those that were not. The overall trend observed by the data collected was that the presence of ethnic enclaves produces an increase in voter registration compared to neighboring counties without such ethnic enclaves. This study concludes that an increase in proximity to other AAPI individuals is associated with a corresponding increase in voter registration.