Our Election Impact
October 31, 2020
• Posted in

One of our missions at LAAUNCH is to increase Asian American representation in the US across all aspects of life. In a year when COVID-19 dominated the news and anti-Asian hate crimes exploded across the nation, it's important for our community’s voices be heard so that elected officials can better understand our issues and concerns.

According to Pew Research, Asian Americans were the fastest-growing segment of eligible voters leading up to the 2020 general election, with more than 11 million eligible voters or nearly 5% of the electorate. And, yet, political candidates tend to focus their outreach more on other groups than the Asian American community.

  • From 2000 to 2020, the number of Asian American eligible voters more than doubled, growing by 139%
  • The Hispanic electorate grew similarly by 121%
  • Meanwhile, Black and White electorates grew by 33% and 7%, respectively

For this effort, we teamed up with APIAVote, a national nonpartisan organization that works with partners to mobilize AAPIs in electoral and civic participation. In the 2020 election, APIAVote launched a digital media campaign in the month leading up to the election across various social media platforms, focusing on five key swing states where Asian American voters were of sufficient size to make a difference—MI, NC, PA, TX, and WI. Our contributions funded the efforts in Pennsylvania while other partners helped with the campaigns in the other states.

APIAVote created multiple static banner ads and videos featuring celebrities from several ethnicities that targeted unique communities in each state. Each video was designed to encourage and educate eligible voters on how and when to vote in the election. You may have seen some of these videos on our social media accounts.

We are thrilled with the results achieved by APIAVote and are delighted to have been a part of this effort. Across the country, the campaign reached over three million AAPI voters and served them with over 24 million digital impressions, resulting in over 3.8 million completed video views, and 10,516 clicks to obtain voting information from APIAVote’s website.

Once the results started coming in, it was clear AAPI voters made a difference in this election cycle, especially in the key battleground states where the margins separating Biden and Trump were so slim. Overall, AAPI voters turned out in record numbers this year. According to TargetSmart, a political data firm, 19% more AAPI voters cast an early ballot in battleground states than voted in total in the 2016 election. The only other group to see their early vote exceed their 2016 total turnout was Latino voters, albeit by a narrower margin. In Georgia, AAPI voters exceeded their total 2016 turnout by 57%; 61,829 who voted in 2020 didn’t vote in 2016; and almost 30,500 voted for the first time in their lives. In Texas, Arizona, and North Carolina, AAPI early voters exceeded their total 2016 turnout by 53%, 43%, and 32%, respectively.

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LAAUNCH is a volunteer-based, non-profit organization. Our donors allow LAAUNCH to fund the programs needed to fight anti-Asian racism, increase Asian American representation, and provide the resources needed to create a brighter future.
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