Jeong, Jongwoo (2022-07). Essays on Party Identification Among the New Americans in the Era of Immigration and Polarization. Doctoral Dissertation.
Thesis
Scholars, politicians, and pundits have repeatedly described new Americans, mostly Asian Americans and Latinos, as a "Sleeping Giant" to emphasize their potential as the decisive voter who shuffles up traditional U.S. party politics. However, this sleeping giant has been either half-asleep or half-awake such that their voter turnout rate has never been higher than, or even close to, either White or Black voters. Why don't new Americans participate in politics? How do polarized political environments affect the way new Americans join politics in the U.S.? In my dissertation, I try to solve this puzzle by studying the development of party identification among new Americans. Understanding how new Americans develop their party identification is important to our understanding of why new Americans do or do not participate in the politics of the U.S. This is be-cause choosing a "team" in the politics of the U.S. precedes all other political behaviors such that, without adopting a party, one cares less about the "games" of American politics. The first essay focuses on how increased clarity in party differences due to polarization affects the development of party identification among early-generation immigrants. I find that polarization ironically benefits early-generation immigrants by helping them increasingly self-identify with their own party with motivations like native-born Americans over time, by applying supervised machine learning techniques for text similarity. The second essay studies the origins of negative partisanship among Asian Americans and Latinos focusing on factors uniquely relevant to Asian American and Latino experiences/perceptions in the U.S. I find that, first, Asian Americans and Latinos do develop negative partisanship but to a lesser degree compared to other non-immigrant Americans; second, that perceived social discrimination asymmetrically shapes negative partisanship toward each Democrat and Republican minorities; and third, that linked fate with the pan-ethnic group only has a small impact on negative partisanship among Asian Americans and Latinos. In the third essay, I suggest a general theory of minority party identification focusing on acculturation psychology. I find that a strong assimilation (multicultural) psychology is related to Republican ( Democratic) party identification among Asian Americans and Latinos.
