Blue states, red states and Fil-ams’ usual presidential preferences

In the US, states like California, Hawaii, Massachusetts, and Minnesota are traditionally tagged as blue states due to their recurrent support for Democrat presidential candidates. Texas, Arizona, Alaska, and Idaho always vote Republicans and thus, they are known as red states. The Filipinos are more often identified with the Democrats.

My research on 12 consecutive presidential elections in the US indicate that the District of Columbia, which is the capital of USA, always voted for Democrat presidential candidates from 1972 to 2016. Minnesota voted Democrat 11 times from 1976 to 2016. In 1972, it supported Nixon. In said 12 elections, Massachusetts and Hawaii voted Democrat 10 times. The only times that Massachusetts voted Republican was in 1980 and 1984 both for Ronald Reagan. Hawaii voted for Nixon in 1972 and for Reagan in 1984 but voted Democrat all the way in the 10 out of 12 polls. California used to vote Republican from 1972 to 1988, especially during the times of two Californian presidents, Nixon and Reagan. From 1992 to 2016, California always voted Democrat, including Carter, Bill Clinton, Obama, and Hillary Clinton. The same is true for Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Michigan, and Maryland. They all voted Democrat from 1992 to 2016.

The following states voted seven out of 12 times in the same span: Vermont, Washington, Oregon, and North California. On the other hand, the following states consistently supported Republican presidential bets from 1972 to 2016: Arizona, Alaska, Kansas, Idaho, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Utah, Wyoming. The following states voted Republican in 11 out of 12 elections: Montana, which voted Democrat only in 1992, Mississippi which voted Democrat for Carter only in 1976, and Indiana, which voted Democrat only in 2008 for Obama. All the rest, they were loyal Republicans. Kentucky voted 10 out of 12 for Republicans. It was only in 1971 that they voted for Carter and in 1992 when they chose Clinton.

Based on statistics (2017 survey), Filipinos reside in the following states: California, 1,651,933; Hawaii, 367,364; Texas, 194,427; Washington, 178,300; Nevada, 169,462; Illinois, 159,385; New York, 144,436; Florida, 143,481; New Jersey, 129,514; Virginia, 108,128; Maryland, 71,856; and Arizona, 70,393. The top 10 cities in terms of Filipino population are the following: LA, San Francisco, New York, Honolulu, San Diego, Chicago, Las Vegas, Riverside, California, San Jose, California, and Seattle, Washington The Filipinos are the largest group among the Asian immigrants in the following states: Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, Washington, South Dakota, and Wyoming.

In presidential elections, the Filipino votes are always swing and determinant blocs in some states. In Hawaii, a Filipino was elected in a four-cornered fight, whereby he won by plurality of 36.58% of the votes as the fifth governor of Hawaii. A staunch Democrat, he was reelected in 1998 with a more convincing majority win over the Republican bet, garnering more than 50.11% of the total votes. He ran for Honolulu mayor in 2012 and garnered 90.956 in the primaries. But he lost with a slim margin on election day. Cayetano appeared as himself in Baywatch. He is the only Filipino politician in Hawaii who was able to unite the Visayan and the Ilocano voting blocs.

This coming November, I predict that Hawaii, along with California, Washington, New York, Nevada, New Jersey and even Florida and other blue states will continue to vote Democrats, for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, a Californian. I have a feeling however that the red states will make Trump win in the Electoral College, even if Biden wins the popular votes.