Syracuse political scientist Spencer Piston analyzes the relationship between skin color and political identity:
Recent research suggests that social exclusion can lead Asian Americans to identify as Democrats. The idea is that upon experiencing discrimination, Asian Americans decide to ally themselves with minority constituencies that also experience discrimination, as well as the party thought to represent those constituencies – the Democratic Party. By this logic, those ethnic minorities most likely to lean Republican should be those least likely to suffer discrimination: those with light skin.
Consistent with this line of thinking, the relationship between skin color and partisan preferences among Latinos and Asian Americans is illustrated [above].
He found that, “in the 2012 election for Senate, the darkest-skinned Latinos are estimated to have a 98-percent chance of voting for the Democrat, whereas the lightest-skinned Latinos are estimated to have a 43-percent chance.” Jamelle Bouie remarks, “Data like this is more evidence for the need for humility in long-term political forecasts”:
We don’t know if minorities will make up the majority in the United States in 50 years, as many people predict. Given rates of intermarriage, it’s possible we’ll have a large population of people who are Latino and Asian in the same way that Italian Americans are Italian. And if we do become a “majority-minority” country, there’s no guarantee minorities will hold their Democratic allegiance. But, regardless of how it looks, we’ll have a multiracial society. And this study–like others around color – raise larger questions of how it might develop over the next century. Indeed, if the strength and durability of color stigma is any indication, we might move to a country where we’ve eased the problems of racial discrimination, only to find ourselves – like our Latin American neighbors – in a new hierarchy of color prejudice.
The Dish 