Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush once described Asian-Americans as the "canary in the coal mine" of the Republican Party, saying that if Republicans didn't make more of an effort to court the fastest-growing racial group in the United States, the party would pay a price at the polls.
Now a new report from the National Asian American Survey finds not only that Asian-Americans continue a steady drift away from the GOP, but that the party may be losing one of its most reliable ethnic groups.
Among registered Asian-American voters, the survey found Democrat Hillary Clinton had a 4-1 lead over Republican Donald Trump.
Alton Wang, a communications associate with the nonpartisan group APIAVote, said many Asian-Americans are increasingly turned off by anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim rhetoric. More than one in five respondents were undecided. This is especially key because swing states, including Nevada, Virginia and North Carolina, have sizable Asian-American populations with undecided voters.
One group stood out. Vietnamese-Americans were once considered a reliable Republican voting bloc. But since 2008, more voters identified as something other than Republican. Here's what the survey found:
"In the past, Vietnamese Americans were the only Asian American group more likely to identify as Republican than Democrat. In 2008, 42% of Vietnamese American registered voters identified as Republican, compared to 23% in 2016. Among this group, non-partisan identifiers are growing. In 2008, 40% of Vietnamese registered voters identified as independent or claimed they did 'not think in terms of political parties,' but this number rose to 47% in 2016."
Vietnamese-Americans, many of whom came to the U.S. as refugees after the Vietnam War, stood out in one other way: They were among the least likely to say they support accepting Syrian refugees into the United States.