LOS ANGELES, UNITED STATES: Eight-year-old David Luu helps his mother Hui Zhang, a Cantonese speaker, read and complete her ballot at a polling center set up inside a community center in Chinatown in Los Angeles, California, 02 March 2004. (Photo credit: ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images via Flickr @booknews)
One week after the 2018 Midterm Elections and with mail-in and provisional ballots finally being counted, pollsters are now realizing the true size of this year’s so-called “blue wave”: riding a surge of votes for Democratic candidates, the Democratic party now appears poised to pick up 35 to 40 seats in the House, and may have lost only 1 or 2 seats in the Senate. An American Decisions exit poll of Black, Latinx, and Asian American & Pacific Islander (AAPI) voters further demonstrates how influential voters of color were in fueling that “blue wave”.
These aren’t the election results you deserve, but these are the election results you’re going to get right now (Infographic by APAICS).
2014 was a record-breaking year for Asian American and Pacific Islander political candidates: this year, 39 AAPI candidates launched a campaign for Congressional office compared to 29 in 2012 and only 8 in 2010. 22 AAPI candidates made it past their primary races compared to only 13 two years ago. Four AAPIs were running in a gubernatorial race with an additional 3 competing for the Lt. Governor’s office in Hawaii. An unprecedented 159 AAPI candidates were running for a local elected office in 26 states.
Election Night 2014 was certainly shaping up to be a big night for AAPI political representation. Sadly, this just wasn’t our year. After the jump, here’s the the breakdown of what happened last night.
