This story is part of a statewide partnership of more than 30 nonpartisan newsrooms and universities working to help Florida voters make informed decisions in the 2026 elections. Learn more about the Florida Elections Reporting Partnership at floridaelections.org.
Boba shops are popping up alongside dumpling restaurants and sprawling Asian supermarkets, as the state’s fast-growing Asian American Pacific Islander population changes the face of Florida.
Home to the nation’s seventh-largest Asian population, Florida’s Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) community is growing rapidly, but whether that cultural influence can translate into political power remains to be seen, especially as these voters are largely ignored by most campaigns. The total AAPI voting bloc in Florida increased by 70.26% between 2014 and 2024, according to a joint study by the nonpartisan nonprofit APIAVote and AAPI Data, a research organization based at the University of California, Berkeley.
“Today, it’s awesome. Everybody wants to go to the Asian Fest, and everybody wants to eat Asian food,” said Mimi McAndrews, the first Asian-American woman elected to the Florida Legislature, as a member of the Florida House of Representatives from the 85th district from 1992 to 1994. “I didn’t have that when I was growing up, or when I was running for office. It was hard to find good Asian food and the Asian groups that existed were not very present.”
In the last decade, from 2014 to 2024, the total AAPI population grew by 48.4%, compared to the national rate of around 32%, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
In 2024, the total AAPI population in the US was over 27 millions with eligible voters numbering around 16 million, according to APIAVote.
For 2026, in a national poll, they found 90% of AAPI registered voters say they plan to vote in the 2026 midterm elections, up from 84% in 2022 and 86% in 2018. And in a Florida election where races may be close, every vote counts.
“It’s just incredible to see how much influence we can have in these elections, which are decided by dozens of votes,” said Joaquin Rafaele Marcelino, a Filipino-Chinese American student who just graduated from the University of Florida, based in Alachua County, which holds the highest share of Asians in the state at 7.7%.
Asian Americans are the nation’s fastest-growing demographic, making up 6.9% of the U.S. population, according to the U.S. Census.
In Florida, they account for 3.5% of residents but have a larger presence in certain areas of the state, like Orange County, at 6.7%, which rivals the national proportion. Other counties with large Asian populations include Broward, Hillsborough, Duval and Miami-Dade.
Sunshine and possibility
Like other newcomers, Asian Americans are drawn to Florida for the warm weather and economic opportunities.
“We have a shortage of teachers in the United States, particularly Florida, and a lot of them are coming from the Philippines, because they can speak English,” said Agnes Lopez, a founding board member of Jax Filipinos, which serves one of the Southeast’s largest Filipino populations.
The group practices “bayanihan,” or sharing a sense of belonging, by helping these new transplants secure housing, furniture and school supplies. They also celebrate Filipino culture with the wider Jacksonville community through events such as Philippine Independence Day at Riverside Arts Market, which attracts more than ten thousand.
Besides jobs, the subtropical climate has also drawn Asians to Florida, with many saying the “weather is very similar to home,” said May Thach, “Like, we could grow anything that we want.”
And while numbers may be growing, this constituency largely remains unreached. For 2026, APIAVote and AAPI Data found 42% reporting no contact from the Democratic Party and 58% from the Republican Party.
“We knocked on a door…of an East Asian voter, and she’s like, ‘I’ve lived here for 25 years, and no one’s ever knocked on my door to talk about voting or talk about, like, what do I care about?’” said Thach, who spent years working for the community as a part of the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum, including door-to-door canvassing after pandemic restrictions were lifted.
“Where I am in the St. Petersburg, Tampa Bay area, we don’t have any representation like in the State House. We currently have zero AAPI representatives,” said Thach, before recently deciding to run herself this year as a Democrat candidate for the Florida House of Representatives District 61. With population growth, she adds, “We have the momentum to build what we want to see within our generation.”
The Cambodian American stressed that AAPI voters need to feel empowered to tell public officials that “this is my lived experience and you’re my representative and you’re not doing anything about my life.”
But the AAPI community is not a monolith, with roots across more than 40 different countries and 25 thousand islands in the Pacific. While AAPI voters tend to lean Democrat in party identification, according to APIAVote and AAPI Data, political preferences can vary among ethnic groups and generations.
Despite their parents “not sharing the same political beliefs,” recent University of Florida graduate Joaquin Rafaele Marcelino campaigns for Florida Senate candidate Angie Nixon, because she “acknowledges how pivotal the Asian American population has been to building up the United States.”
In the past, besides President Donald Trump and Charlie Christ for his run for governor in the mid-2000’s, Ricky Ly does not recall any other state or local officials with dedicated AAPI outreach, except for Nixon.
“To have dedicated staff for AAPI outreach in Florida is exceptionally rare, if not historic,” said the Vietnamese Chinese American co-founder of AAPI Coming Together, a nonpartisan nonprofit focused on increasing AAPI civic engagement.
In comments to The Florida Trib, Nixon said politicians need to do more to recognize and engage AAPI voters.
“One thing I’ve heard repeatedly from AAPI community members is that they feel invisible in our politics and that needs to change. Too often, politicians overlook communities until they need their votes and many AAPI voters haven’t been contacted by either party. I believe that no community should have to fight to get candidates who hope to be their leaders to pay attention,” said Nixon, who has fliers in multiple languages, including Mandarin Chinese, Tagalog, Vietnamese, Spanish and Haitian Creole.
“With so many different backgrounds, languages, and concerns—whether it’s the cost of living, small businesses, education, immigration, or discrimination—we can’t treat the AAPI community as a monolith and must take the time to listen.”
Growing pains
But that lack of outreach may reflect how much the AAPI population may be underestimated.
“They didn’t recognize the value that I brought to the table,” said Anna Lopez Brosche, CFO of the city of Jacksonville in Duval, the fourth-largest county for Asian residents at 6.5%.
As the first Asian American woman elected to the Jacksonville City Council, she recalled that when she first ran as a Republican candidate, she met with an organization and “the leader treated their support as a favor I should be grateful for, overlooking that a slate with only one woman and two non-white candidates needed my presence more than I needed their endorsement.”
And while Asian populations are higher now, that wasn’t always the case.
When the first Asian-American woman in the Florida Legislature, Mimi McAndrews, started her term back in the 90s as a Democrat at the Florida Capitol in Tallahassee, she said she would get “some very unusual looks,” with members asking, “What’s somebody like you doing here?”
Even when she started campaigning, she left her photo off the mailer.
“I just thought it might be safer. I guess because I did have a portion of the county that was very, redneck, for lack of a better word… out there with their Civil War plates and their Confederate flags… I did put it on after that, but now… I would not do that. I would not recommend that anybody do that.”
In Broward County, home to Florida’s second-largest Asian population, at 4.9%, both Congressional District 22 candidates have immigrant roots from the Asia region and have sent out numerous campaign mailers featuring their faces.
“In my experience growing up and now living here as an adult, we’ve been the few and the brave,” said Pia Dandiya, the Democrat candidate in the race.
She added that her parents immigrated to Palm Beach County more than 40 years ago from India “in search of the American dream,” and serving the country would be the “next level of this American dream.”
“I’m so proud of how far we have come as a community in South Florida, so that is wonderful news to me that we are continuing to expand our diversity in the state, because I think that is one of the things that makes us stronger as a state and a country,” the former White House fellow and high school principal said.
“I see it more as an opportunity, especially in a moment where there have been some really troubling statements from this administration about certain racial groups in a way that we have never seen as a country. And I think being a counterpoint to that in the kind of campaign we run, and how we build a coalition that is bigger than any one of us, I think that’s the most powerful message we could send in this moment in time.”
Her Republican opponent, Casey Askar, fled as a child from Iraq, part of the Western Asia region in the Middle East. Multiple calls, texts and emails went unanswered, but his site says his family legally immigrated to the U.S., escaping religious persecution. And in a past ad from the businessman’s 2000 campaign for Florida’s 19th Congressional District, the military veteran also evoked the American dream, saying, “I’ll defend America with everything I have because I owe everything I have to America.”
The Untapped Vote
Political parties may also be overlooking AAPI voters because of historically lower voter participation, tied to cultural and language barriers, explained Hannah Locop, chair of Florida Asian Americans & Pacific Islanders for Progress.
“Statistically, Asian Americans were less likely to vote,” said Ricky Ly, co-founder of AAPI Coming Together, focused on increasing AAPI civic engagement. “Everyone is in their own enclave, and not really integrating or, you know, having a say, really, in how city politics or government works.”
In 2024, voter turnout for Asian Americans lagged behind white and Black citizens at 49 percent, versus 65 and 60, respectively, and was only a percentage point higher than the Hispanic population at 48 percent, according to AAPI Data.
“We’re lost in translation,” added Mishy Rashid, a Pakistani American and Republican running for the Leon County Commission. “We don’t have good representation here. … It might be a language barrier or a lack of understanding. … We are solid in our family structures, in our educational structures, in the things that we do and where we get. It’s both good and bad, because we’re also passing a message that we don’t want to be bothered. However, we’re not letting them reach out to us. … That happens by us being vulnerable and putting ourselves out.”
And her advice to the larger community and to fellow candidates: “Rather than marginalizing, take that moment and … build a bridge.”
Style note: There are many ways to describe the Asian population in America, but traditionally “Asian American” is the umbrella term used for the broader population. It is not interchangeable with Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI), since that also includes Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander populations. For more on terminology, here is the Asian American Journalists Association’s language guide and a video explainer.
