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UTA students John Lam and Vincent Dinh’s politics go in two different directions.
Lam cares about infrastructure, immigration and civil rights and leans progressive.
Dinh, however, backs a Republican economy in terms of adding jobs and lowering gas prices.
Both represent over 1.3 million Vietnamese American adults eligible to vote, according to the Asian and Pacific Islander Data. While many lean Republican, experts say sentiments after the Vietnam War don’t tell the whole story — culture and language barriers factor into the support. Now, as the younger generation reaches voting age, a potential shift may be happening.
A Pew Research Center survey released in May showed 51% of Vietnamese registered voters identified as or leaned Republican, while 42% identified as or leaned Democratic. Most Chinese, Indian, Filipino and Korean American voters identified as or leaned Democratic, according to the poll.
However, an October survey from the Asian and Pacific Island American Data showed that 42% of Vietnamese registered voters identified as or leaned Democratic, while 37% identified as or leaned Republican.
Research has remained consistent in showing Vietnamese Americans’ support for the Republican Party, different surveys may yield various responses, said Alex-Thái Đình Võ, assistant professor at the Vietnam Center and Sam Johnson Vietnam Archive at Texas Tech University.
Older Vietnamese Americans generally tend to care about the politics in Vietnam more so than in America, Võ said. They believe their votes in the U.S. are meant to impact policies and improve freedom, development and human rights in Vietnam.
“They care so much about what is going on in Vietnam, the development in Vietnam because they know why they left Vietnam,” he said.
After Saigon fell in 1975, the communist-led North took over the U.S.-backed South to reunify Vietnam. Millions of Vietnamese people who collaborated with the U.S. or were critical of the communist government fled the country to escape re-education camps or imprisonment. The first waves of Vietnamese immigrants held deep anti-communist views.
The younger generations, however, don’t, Võ said. They see themselves more as Americans and relate to social issues like resolving student debt, health care and housing.
Lam, political science graduate student, acknowledges many Vietnamese Americans are conservative, but he doesn’t agree with the Republican Party’s policies.
“I just think the Democrats as a whole are a much better party to have in power than the current incarnation of the Republican Party,” he said.
Võ said older Vietnamese Americans tend to take welfare policies like health care and food stamps for granted. Since those already existed when they arrived in the country, they see it as an American system, rather than a Republican versus Democratic Party issue.
Health care policies were a tipping factor for Lam’s parents to support the Democratic Party, he said. The Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, helped decrease his father’s bill of over $30,000 after he was uninsured and hospitalized a decade ago.
Lam’s parents can’t vote as permanent green card holders, but they began supporting the Democratic Party after Barack Obama’s successful 2008 presidential campaign and having also listened to former President Donald Trump’s rhetoric in 2016, he said.
His parents left Vietnam in the early ’80s following the war, he said, but his mother said the Republican Party has changed a lot from those days.
“The current Republican Party, especially Donald Trump, has morphed into a very, in her judgment, very authoritarian party almost in the same vein as the communists that took over in 75,” Lam said.
Dinh’s father is a Catholic and supports the Republican Party because of its anti-abortion stance, he said.
Business analytics junior Dinh supports Republicans for a different reason.
“Just based on being in a Democratic economy right now, I feel like it was pretty bad these past four years, so it’d be nice to switch it up again,” he said.
Võ said language barriers also prohibit Vietnamese Americans from listening to newscasts outside of ones in their language, which are typically run by the older, conservative generations.
The perception after the Vietnam War was further reinforced: Republicans had a tough stance toward communism, and Democrats were the ones who betrayed them by protesting against the war, he said.
“I’m not saying that they’re right or wrong, but what I’m saying is that these notions then are repeated in media, especially in Vietnamese media that cater to that audience,” Võ said.
Artificial Intelligence-generated images of Democrats in communist garb plus the party’s lack of meaningful engagement with Vietnamese Americans and tendencies to move on from the war mean many in the community stick with the GOP, Võ said.
For almost two decades, Vietnamese Americans in North Texas can catch news, music, sports and more on VVA 1600 AM. The Voice of Vietnamese American station, located at Asia Times Square in Grand Prairie, serves the area home to over 90,000 Vietnamese.
Lien Bich Dao, the station’s general manager, and her husband Peter Dao, took over the radio in January. For 30 years, she has worked for multiple broadcast stations in Dallas and has chosen to remain neutral in her news delivery, she said.
If you lean on one political affiliation, you lose the audience on the other side, Lien Bich Dao said.
For every news segment, she said she quotes from according to reputable, trusted news sources.
“My goal is to deliver and promote news — no prejudice, no guidance to follow what I want,” she said.
This is one of the closest elections in her career, she said.
Võ said gender roles also play into how Vietnamese Americans may perceive the presidential race. The culture itself tends to look down on women, and that may affect how Vietnamese Americans perceive a potential woman leader.
“It’s important to mention: A lot of people who vote, they don’t necessarily vote because of policy, right? We tend to assume they vote because of policy. Reality, it’s not necessarily true. I used to work in politics, and I used to work in elections — people vote because of how they perceive that person through the image,” he said.
State Rep. Hubert Vo, D-Houston, was the first, and to date, the only Vietnamese American elected to the Texas Legislature since voters sent him to Austin, 20 years ago. He now faces Vietnamese-born Republican Lily Truong in a rematch of 2022. In California, Derek Tran, a Democrat and son of war refugees, is running for one of the most competitive U.S. House seats.
It’s hard to predict where the Vietnamese Americans’ support will go in the next decades, Võ said. The Republican-supporting first generation will no longer be alive. The younger generation may trend toward Democrats, but people tend to become more conservative as they grow older.
“Is that the total reflection of the Vietnamese community? Possibly not,” Võ said. “What you can say is that the Vietnamese American community is more diverse than that, right? It’s not just Republicans or Democrats.”
@DangHLe
news-editor.shorthorn@uta.edu
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