Rise of the Asian American Environmental Voter

The Environmental Voter Project (EVP) released a new report highlighting the disproportionately large numbers of Asian American & Pacific Islander (AAPI) environmentalists identified by EVP's February 2023 predictive modeling data across all 19 states. The report details EVP’s findings on AAPI environmentalists, while also highlighting multi-year trends, state-specific demographic data, and AAPI environmentalists’ voting propensity. 
 

Some of the key state takeaways from the report include:

• 1 in 4 AAPI voters are environmentalists. Across the 19 states studied, 24.8% of AAPI registered voters were likely to consider either “climate change” or “clean air, clean water, and the environment” as their top issue priority. 
• Both AAPI and African-American environmentalists are becoming more prevalent over time. Over the past four years, AAPI and African-American voters have steadily emerged as the two racial groups with the greatest percentage of environment-first voters.
• The Potential Impact of AAPI Environmental Voters in Pennsylvania. In Pennsylvania — perhaps the biggest of all swing states — fully one-third of all AAPI voters are likely environment-first voters, which is more than twice the percentage of environmentalists found in any other racial group in Pennsylvania.

The report also highlights who these voters are:

• Overwhelmingly young. Across the 19 states studied, almost 59% of AAPI environmentalists are between the ages of 18-34, compared to just 50.6% of non-AAPI environmentalists. Among all registered voters, only 26.2% are ages 18-34. 
• Disproportionately female. Female AAPI environmentalists outnumber male AAPI environmentalists 53.9% to 41.3% (with 4.8% unknown). This 12.6-point gender gap is much larger than the 5.3-point gender gap which exists among all registered voters, although not quite as large as the 16-point gender gap among non-AAPI environmentalists. 
• AAPI Environmentalists Vote Less Often than Other Environmentalists. Only 68.9% of already-registered AAPI environmentalists voted in the 2020 presidential election, compared to 72.6% of non-AAPI environmentalists and 73.2% turnout among all registered voters.