Asian Americans in Georgia: An Ascendant Political Force

Journalist Rachel Shin traveled to Atlanta to report on the rise of Georgia's Asian American electorate since the devastating 2021 Atlanta shootings and the anti-Asian hate era during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Shin covered a state House race and interviewed dozens of political scientists, politicians, activists, and scholars in Asian American and Pacific Islander studies. The picture that emerged was surprising and nuanced: Georgian Asian Americans have made huge leaps in political influence in a Deep South state where their vote has been historically disregarded. In just three years since the shootings and the pandemic, the number of Asian American representatives in the Georgia state Legislature has over doubled, and their numbers now exceed those of the AAPI caucuses in both New York and California.

The situation is complicated by the fact that Asian Americans are perhaps the most politically “pliable” ethnic group, political scientists said. They swing Democratic, but there is a large contingent of religious, socially conservative Asian Americans whom Republicans are assiduously courting. They are a newly powerful political force in a battleground state that both parties are competing fiercely over.