A Conjoint Experiment on Hong Kong American Voters’ Turn to Trump in 2020

• In Event: The Causes of Vote Switching

Abstract

While many Asian Americans lent their support to Biden and the Democratic Party in the 2020 elections in the US, Hong Kong Americans were an outlier. According to our pilot survey, almost three-fifth of the eligible Hong Kong American voters expressed their support for Trump in the latest election. Interestingly one-third of the Trump supporters in 2020 voted for Hilary Clinton in 2016. What explain such a drastic switch? It is commonly believed that Hong Kong Americans in the 2020 election were not driven by partisan affiliation but a single issue – US-China policy regarding Hong Kong’s political future. This study aims to rigorously test which policy issues are most relevant in shaping Hong Kong American voters' preferences for presidential candidates, and whether policy saliency varies across Trump and Biden supporters. We investigate these questions with a conjoint survey experiment.

This study contributes to the literature in two ways. This study is the first of its kind, zooming in on Hong Kong American as a distinct identity. Given the heterogeneity among Asians – with immense differences even within the subcategories of South Asians, Southeast Asians, East Asians, and Central Asians – the label “Asian Americans” is at best an “imagined community.” Second, while the US elections are largely domestic affairs, voters with strong connection to their origin countries bring an extra set of interest that may factor in their voting calculus. With the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong gaining traction at the international stage and in the US, this presented a perfect opportunity to examine the political attitudes of Hong Kong Americans.

Authors

• Maggie Shum, University of Notre Dame

• Victoria Tin-bor Hui, University of Notre Dame