Impact of Pan-Ethnic Identity Appeals on Asian American and Latino Political Behavior

Abstract

Political scientists have long documented the ways in which racial group identities matter for the political behavior of racial and ethnic minorities. Yet when it comes to national origin identities, with some exceptions (Lien 2010; Wals 2011), none have compared the relative effectiveness of pan-ethnic and national origin identities on political behavior. I argue, however, that national origin identities should influence Asian American and Latino political behavior given that a large proportion of the members of these populations prefer their national origin identities (Fraga et al. 2011; Wong et al. 2011). In particular, I consider lived experiences as factors that inform who identifies and responds to pan-ethnic and national origin political appeals. These include nativity status, length of years in the U.S., and dominant language usage. Using two national political surveys of Latinos and Asian Americans and four original survey experiments conducted among national samples of Asian Americans and Latinos, I provide evidence that relative to pan-ethnic appeal, national origin appeals do influence candidate vote choice, and willingness to volunteer at an organization. In particular, national origin appeal is significantly more meaningful for foreign-born individuals. Lastly, I find that U.S.-born Latinos respond favorably to the pan-ethnic identity appeals whereas U.S.-born Asian Americans either reject such appeals or are indifferent to them. The findings of this research suggest that pan-ethnic appeals when used in political campaigns and interest group outreach are not as effective as previous scholars have found.