U.S. Panethnicity and its Effect on Racialized Political Alignments of Latino/as and Asian Americans

• In Event: Racial and Ethnic Minorities Section Roundtables Session
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Table Six: Racial Experiences and Perspectives of Asian People and Asian Americans

Abstract

In this article, I ask the following research questions: How do panethnic and ethnonational attachment affect political ideology and political party affiliation? How do experiences of discrimination mediate this relationship between panethnic and ethnonational attachment and political ideology and political party affiliation? A better understanding of U.S. incorporation allows us to analyze historical patterns and the increasing diversity of the U.S. population. Scholarship needs to acknowledge that panethnic and ethnonational identity may also be a political choice. Implementing publicly available data from the Collaborative Multi-racial Post-election Survey (2016), I run OLS regression models to examine the effects of panethnic and ethnonational identity (among Latino/a and Asian American respondents) on political ideology. I also run multinomial logit models to examine the effects of panethnic and ethnonational identities on political party affiliation. Additionally, my analysis accounts for controls (i.e., gender, birth year, income, education, and U.S. region) and perceptions of discrimination towards Latino/as and Asian Americans as predictors for any panethnic effects. Previous research has shown that Latino/s and Asian Americans are more likely to lean Democrat compared to white voters. However, they are far less reliable voters than Black voters. My research demonstrates that there is a consistent effect of panethnic attachment among Latino/a and Asian American respondents from CMPS (2016).

Author

• Christine Michelle Capili, University of La Verne