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Podcasts Take Two
Building a better way to poll Asian-Americans
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Sep 26, 2014
Listen 5:01
Building a better way to poll Asian-Americans
The problem facing some pollsters is that some Asian ethnic groups are closed off to outsiders, making it hard to know where they stand on statewide issues.
Chinese youth volunteer in Chinatown on the Sunday before election day to get infrequent voters to cast their ballots.
Chinese youth volunteer in Chinatown on the Sunday before election day to get infrequent voters to cast their ballots.
(
Ruxandra Guidi/KPCC
)

The problem facing some pollsters is that some Asian ethnic groups are closed off to outsiders, making it hard to know where they stand on statewide issues.

When it comes to people immigrating to California, twice as many hail from Asia than Latin America.

That's a lot of new voters. But, the problem facing pollsters is that some of those Asian ethnic groups can be closed off to outsiders, making it hard to know where they stand on statewide issues.

Karthick Ramakrishnan is a political science professor at UC-Riverside and director of the National Asian American Survey. He's currently working to find better ways to survey this population on political issues.