Why More Vietnamese Americans Are Voting For Trump

October 8, 2020

President Donald Trump has maintained support from the Vietnamese American community for the upcoming election in November.

Loyal support: Among Asian Americans, Vietnamese voters are the most likely to choose Trump over Joe Biden, a new survey has found.

Advocacy groups APIAVote, AAPI Data and Asian Americans Advancing Justice asked nearly 1,600 Asian Americans in the survey.
Based on the findings, 48% of Vietnamese Americans preferred the incumbent president while 36% favored the Democratic nominee.
Chinese, Indian, Korean, Japanese and Filipino descent voters collectively chose Biden over Trump by a margin of 54% to 30%.
In a similar poll conducted by APIAVote and AAPI Data in 2018, 64% of Vietnamese Americans were satisfied with Trump’s performance as president.
In an informal Facebook poll recently conducted by a journalist of Vietnamese origin, 94% of the respondents said they are voting for Trump.

Generational voting gap: Despite the poll results, experts believe that the younger Vietnamese voters are more likely to vote Democrat compared to their parents and grandparents, reports South China Morning Post.

Columbia University historian Lien-Hang T. Nguyen, an expert on the Vietnam war and U.S.-Southeast Asian relations, stated that there is “no monolithic Vietnamese-American vote.”
36-year-old San Jose City Council member Diep The Lan said he is choosing Biden for his experience in domestic and foreign policy as well as his empathy.
A former Republican himself, Lan said his father supported Trump “because he believes a Trump presidency will be beneficial to the pro-democracy movement in Vietnam more than a Biden presidency.”
24-year-old Yale University law student Colette Brannan avoids conflict with her Trump-supporting extended family by not discussing politics with them.
Brannan said she was inspired by members of the Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network as well as Viet Thanh Nguyen, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author who admonished Trump and Vietnamese Americans who supported him.

For Trump or the Republican party: Older Vietnamese Americans offered varying reasons for their current support for Trump.

The Vietnamese Americans for Trump as President Again (TAPA) group, whose members include refugees and former South Vietnam military veterans, think Trump’s performance is the main reason why Vietnamese voters love him.
“Asian-American lives have improved significantly under the Trump presidency, with a very strong economy and nearly full employment before the pandemic,” TAPA founding member Pham Do Chi, 71, and a former International Monetary Fund economist was quoted as saying.
Chi believes Trump will be able to bring America out of the current economic crisis.
For 62-year-old Thinh Nguyen, many Vietnamese Americans are just inclined to support Republicans, which he says comes from the belief that Democrats caused the loss of South Vietnam during the Vietnam War.
When the war ended in 1975, over 2 million Vietnamese, Cambodian and Laotian refugees were forced to flee their home countries. Over 880,000 of the 1.6 million Vietnamese refugees settled in the U.S.

Feature Image via The Daily Caller

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