Will GOP again lose Asian-American vote?

IN the aftermath of the defeat of their candidate in the 2012 US presidential race, Republicans decided to conduct an "autopsy" of their performance in the elections so as to figure out ways to change their strategies for future campaigns.

Much of the media's attention at that time was on the failure of GOP candidate Mitt Romney to win the Hispanic vote, with 71 per cent of Latino voters backing the Democratic candidate, President Barack Obama. But in fact, Hispanics have traditionally voted for Democratic candidates. Many immigrants from Mexico are poor and unemployed and tend to benefit from government social-economic programmes. They are therefore more inclined to vote for Democratic candidates who support expanding those programmes while pro-free market Republicans have called for slashing them. Hence the fact that Mr Romney lost the Hispanic vote was not shocking.

But what was surprising was Mr Obama received greater support from Asian-Americans than from Latinos - 73 per cent of Asian-Americans voted for him in 2012, up from 62 per cent in 2008.