Almost one third of the fast-growing Asian American electorate remains undecided in choosing a presidential candidate, placing the group among the key independent voters coveted by both the McCain and Obama campaigns, according to a new national survey.
In California, where their voting strength is greatest, Asian Americans line up almost 2-to-1 against Proposition 8, a hotly contested measure that would change the Constitution to bar marriage for gay and lesbian couples, researchers found in the California portion of the National Asian American Survey, released Wednesday.
"Asian Americans are the quintessential swing voter group," said S. Karthick Ramakrishnan, a political science professor at UC Riverside and a co-author of the study, which he called the first true national survey of Asians on voting. "Nationally, the undecided vote is 8 to 10 percent. For Asian Americans it's very, very high: 30 percent..."
