Taiwanese Americans’ Vote Choices: Identities, Cultures, and Past Experiences

• In Event: One Election, Multiple Approaches: The Case of Taiwan

Abstract

The diversity of the Asian American communities has been considered one of the most critical features compared to other ethnic communities. The diversity of Asian American communities has been illustrated to influence the voting choice of Asian Americans so that Asian Americans could follow the surnames to vote, and the nations of origin can also affect the voter turnouts for specific politicians. Nevertheless, these studies seem to link the identities derived from the culture-oriented heritages instead of their self-identified nations of origin. In addition to Asian Americans’ self-identification, people with similar cultural backgrounds may have diverse political experiences, which affects their political interests and voting preferences since these people live in different political environments.
To further explore the influence of ethnic identification and the influence of past political experience over similar cultures, this study delves into Taiwanese Americans’ vote choice on Asian American politicians. Taiwanese Americans are a unique ethnic group that is highly affected by Chinese cultures and share similar surnames with Chinese Americans; however, some of them also experienced political repression and life-concerning threats from former authoritarian pro-China leaders. Several new Taiwanese immigrants also experienced a series of crises when the Chinese government bombed Taiwan when the first presidential elections were held in Taiwan around the 1990s. Plenty of Taiwanese Americans also remember the shooting targeting Taiwanese Americans in the church that happened recently.
The study relevant to Taiwanese Americans’ vote choices shows how people with minority backgrounds vote when the two contextual influential factors – cultures and past political experiences – are pulled in opposite directions for personal vote choices. In addition, if the self-identified nationality of origin plays a role in ethnic minorities’ voting behaviors amid a call for solidarity of pan-Asian identity.
This study uses the conjoint experiment to analyze the vote choice of Taiwanese Americans on several candidate sets that include candidates from various ethnic backgrounds, especially Asian Americans with Chinese and Taiwanese origins. This study also uses security concerns in history to examine if Taiwanese Americans’ support for specific Asian Americans will be affected accordingly. This study collected data from the Texas area, where many Taiwanese Americans are located.
This study shows the expected findings that Taiwanese Americans’ vote choices will be affected by their identity and that security concerns will affect their vote choices, such that they prefer to vote for other candidates who share different ethnic backgrounds with them instead of candidates of Chinese origin.

Authors

• Shu-An Tsai, SUNY Buffalo

• Yao-Yuan Yeh, University of St. Thomas