Asians Americans vote Democrat because they're young (and liberal)

An interesting claim was made by Tantum Malorum on Twitter (where I spend all my time these days).  He said that Asians tend to vote Democrat because they are disproportionately young.  I looked into this with GSS data. The mean age of all voters in 2012 was 52.2. Here are the means for Asian groups listed in GSS:

Mean age
Chinese  51.1
Filipino  42.6
Japanese  45.5 
Indian  48.6
Other Asian  45.0

Mean age for all groups was lower than for the total sample, although it's not much lower for Chinese Americans. Since young people tend to vote Democrat, it could be that Asians are not more inclined to be liberal, they're just younger.

Next, let's look at voting in 2012 for: 1) young Asians, and 2) older Asians. I'm going to add all Asian groups together since sample sizes are so low.

Percent voting for Romney

Ages 18-44  
All voters  32%
Asian voters  25%

Ages 45 and up
All voters  40%
Asian voters  38%

First of all, it looks like the numbers are lower than they should be. GSS oversamples women, so this might be a problem.

Anyway, 25% of young Asians voted for Romney, compared to 32% of all young people. For older Asians, there is only a two point gap with all older voters.

So, it looks like the Asian vote is tilted Democrat because they are a younger population, but they are a little more liberal as well.

The numbers are too small to make much of it, but of the Asian groups, Indians were noticeably more likely to vote for Obama.

Data shows that college liberalizes students

I was curious if college liberalizes students. Common sense tells me it does, but I have seen research that throws doubt on the idea.

Listed below are the mean conservatism scores by year of college for those attending college since 2000 (General Social Survey data).

Mean conservatism

Freshmen  4.04
Sophomores  3.71

Juniors  3.62
Seniors  3.69

Students tend to get more liberal as they move through college. The shift from the freshman to junior year is almost half a standard deviation, which means it is a fairly big change.  So it does look like academics are somewhat successful at their goal of turning our youth into progressives. They seem to have the most luck in the first three years--the seniors are no more liberal than juniors.

Which American groups are the most race-loyal?

In a recent post, I found that race predicts political orientation more strongly than does income for many minority groups. It seems to me that the race/politics link, adjusted for the influence of income, is an indication of the importance of race to that particular group.  If members always look at issues through the lens of their racial group, they will tend to vote in the same way and will vote Democrat, regardless of how wealthy they are.

Based on this line of reasoning, here is a ranking of the most race-loyal, race-conscious (if they were white, the term would be race-ist) minority groups.

Race-consciousness ranking
1. Blacks
2. Mexicans
3. Jews
3. Asian Indians
5. Puerto Ricans
6. American Indians
7. Chinese
7. West Indians
9. Japanese
10. Arabs

Not surprisingly, blacks are the most race-conscious group, but it's interesting that West Indians are much less so. Since Jews are white, you might not expect them them to be ethnocentric at all, but they outrank many nonwhite groups.

Asian Indians are quite race-conscious, as are Mexicans and Puerto Ricans (to their own group, not to the fake category of "Hispanic"). Despite being non-white, Chinese and Japanese Americans seem to be less uptight about race. Arabs are even less ethnocentric. (Keep in mind that many of these Arabs are Christians.)

Hispanic IQ in the United States

Average IQ is a good measure of how well a group will do in the United States. A low IQ accurately predicts more problems in a community. Let's see where various Hispanic groups are at. To set white Americans at a mean IQ of 100, I had to set the mean IQ for all Americans at 96.5. This indicates that US IQ has dropped to a level lower than many European and East Asian countries. The results shown below are limited to Hispanics born in the US, since the measure of IQ is a vocabulary test in English, and foreigners are at a disadvantage.

Mean IQ

White Spanish 100.3
White Cuban 99.2
White Mexican 91.5
Mexican--other race 90.5
White Puerto Rican 90.3
Black Puerto Rican 88.4
Puerto Rican--other race 84.0

The only groups with IQs similar to white Americans as a whole are people who describe themselves as White Spanish or White Cuban. We would expect these folks to assimilate well into mainstream America. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, for example, are white Cubans.

For the remaining groups, the average IQs are much lower, ranging from 84 for non-white Puerto Ricans  to 91.5 for self-described White Mexicans. Many Hispanics consider themselves to be white which ignores the fact that most have some American Indian ancestry. As you can see, the IQ difference between white and non-white Hispanics is small. These groups are much more similar to each other than they are to non-Hispanic whites. At least in terms of IQ, it makes sense to lump white and non-white Hispanics into one group, but white Cuban Americans and those who call themselves Spanish should be lumped in with whites.

Based on average IQ, we expect these Hispanic groups with low numbers to fare poorly in the United States, and since IQ is a stable, highly heritable trait, the poor performance is likely to continue indefinitely.