Natalie Nguyen took a party bus to vote in her first general election. Ballot in hand, Nguyen and a group of Asian American college students blasted music, sang and made a pit stop at an Asian night market before heading to an early voting location at Las Vegas Chinatown Plaza.

Friends cheered as the 21-year-old dropped off her ballot and walked out the door. It was by all accounts a joyous experience, but the reasons behind her vote for Vice President Kamala Harris were anything but.

She said she voted for her mom who dreams of owning a home, for her relatives in Vietnam struggling to immigrate to the U.S. due to backlogs.

“My parents took that step to come here and made that very difficult journey — leaving their family — coming to a new country to give their children a better life,” Nguyen said.

Nguyen’s story isn’t singular. Of the 10 Asian voters Annenberg Media spoke to in Clark County, Nevada ahead of the election, six listed immigration and the cost of living among their top concerns. Asian Americans are the fastest-growing racial group in the U.S., and recent elections have seen increased diversity in their political support.

Fighting for and against native identity

It’s been 12 years since former President Barack Obama won the demographic by a 3-to-1 margin in 2008. Since, the booming population has proven anything but monolithic, with nearly a third of Asian voters identifying as Independent, according to a survey conducted by National Opinion Research Center at University of Chicago.

In Nevada — where the Asian community has grown 45% since 2012 — immigrants make up just under half the AAPI population.

Nguyen suggests an Asian immigrant’s vote is influenced by the government of their home country. She said she was surprised to learn that Vietnamese people are sometimes considered “the Republicans of the Asians” but understood why after learning they “escape communism.”

“They really have a nationalistic type of feeling about parties and voting,” Nguyen said. “There’s that kind of aspect, I think, to their support or conservative leanings.”

During his winning 2024 campaign, Donald Trump proposed many nationalistic “America first” policies, from 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico, to promises of mass deportations of undocumented immigrants to wavering messages on limiting monetary and military aid to Ukraine. As president, he’s followed through with action on these fronts.

At Gold Coast Casino in September — three blocks from where Nguyen would later drop off her ballot — Filipino immigrant Nate Gonzalvo promoted his eponymous foundation Infinate at the Pinoy Pride Festival, an event celebrating Filipino culture with live music, dancers in vibrant costumes and traditional food such as lumpia rolls and ube sorbet.

Gonzalvo’s foundation provides food, aid and educational materials to children in his home province of Bulacan, a region north of Manila plagued by regular flooding. Gonzalvo, who said he would vote for Harris, said Filipino immigrants tend to vote for the government of their home country, rather than against it.

“Filipinos came from a Democratic country, so generally most Filipinos are going to want a Democratic president,” Gonzalvo said.

Gonzalvo also said a lot of Filipinos were offended when Trump said America was letting in people from “terrorist nations” and subsequently named the Philippines at a Portland, Maine campaign rally in 2016.

“Filipinos are famous for being family-oriented, so when you offend somebody, you offend the whole nation,” Gonzalvo said.

While identity proved an important motivator, the top issue driving voters this election was the economy, according to Eric Jeng, executive director of Asian advocacy group One APIA Nevada.

“The cost of living, the cost of materials, the cost of gas and food, the inflation part, is on top of peoples’ minds,” Jeng said.

A CNN exit poll of roughly 700 respondents who identified as Asian showed a shift toward Trump in the presidential election. Fifty-five percent said they voted for Harris, while 40% said they voted for Trump.

In Nevada, there were more than 260,000 eligible AAPI voters on Election Day, and Trump won the state by fewer than 50,000 votes. Put differently, Trump’s margin of victory was equivalent to a fifth of the eligible AAPI population.

The fastest-growing immigrant group

Asian Americans also hold the title for fastest-growing immigrant group, with 17% growth this year. A Pew Research Center study projected Asians to become the largest immigrant population in the U.S. by 2055, surpassing Hispanics.

Nguyen, a political science major at University of Nevada, Las Vegas, is writing her thesis on how immigration enforcement affects Asian American identity. She said many people typically overlook Asians as targets of immigration enforcement, adding that Asians are being “deported, detained and arrested.”

“We have quotas of how many immigrants can come from each country,” Nguyen said. “We have huge backlogs, like super long wait times and processing times.”

A 2019 research report from Asian Americans Advancing Justice, an organization that advocates for Asian American civil rights, found that Asians comprise 40% of family preference visa backlogs.

At a Harris rally at MGM Grand Garden Arena on the eve of the election, Malaysian immigrant Ben Yau said his foreign-born status plays a decisive role in how he votes, and the Democratic Party makes him feel “at home.”

“The other side, they are just ostracizing everybody else that doesn’t look like them,” Yau said. “And by them, I mean white.”

Trump supporter and Filipino immigrant Janette Jenkins, 60, shared her father’s reasons for coming to the United States, and they echo the motivations of Nguyen’s mom.

“He wanted all of us to strive and to be good people and to be successful in life,” Jenkins said at a JD Vance campaign rally in Las Vegas on Nov. 2.

However, Jenkins said the path to U.S. citizenship must be earned and described her own five-year quest for citizenship as “reasonable.”

“I came here in 1976 and I worked the week I got here,” Jenkins said. “It’s so unfair that these people are getting [benefits] and money from the government.”

Accessibility and representation

One APIA Nevada has been advocating for ballot language access through legislation such as the failed AB246 — vetoed by Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo — which would’ve translated election materials to more communities. Language advocacy groups fell just under 500 signatures short of mandating Chinese ballots, but Tagalog ballots were available for the first time in a general election in 2024.

Nguyen said voting can be intimidating when your language isn’t represented, and that fear extends to other aspects of life.

“A lot of older Asian people I know, they’re hesitant to go to the doctor because they’re worried about not being able to speak English,” Nguyen said.

Jeng said that ballot language access is important because there is “a rise of mis- and disinformation in minority communities.”

Focus groups of Vietnamese Americans found that misinformation and disinformation — primarily on Facebook and YouTube — amplified pre-existing prejudices amongst older individuals, leading to a distrust of perceived “liberal” media and a belief in election interference despite fact checks by news outlets.

In an election that saw Harris become the first Asian woman to receive a presidential nomination from a major party, Asian voters who spoke to Annenberg Media emphasized the importance of representation. When asked when they felt represented by the federal government, a pair of AAPI voters had to reach 25 years into the past for the answer.

Ofelia Felarca, Gonzalvo’s business partner at Infinate, said she liked former President Bill Clinton’s economic policies, but also commended his creation of the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in 1999. According to the executive order, the initiative intended to “improve the quality of life of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders through increased participation in federal programs where they may be underserved.”

President Joe Biden reestablished the initiative in 2021 and added Native Hawaiians. Adrian Kamali’i spoke at the first-ever White House convening of the Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders in early September, advocating for Hawaiian tribes to be federally recognized.

Later in the month, Kamali’i flew from Honolulu to Las Vegas to attend a Harris campaign rally, where he praised Clinton for a different reason. He said in 1993 Clinton signed an apology resolution acknowledging America’s role in the overthrow of the Hawaiian kingdom 100 years prior.

“I think Native Hawaiians just want to be seen, and that’s a validation of sorts.”