finds

Nearly two-thirds of California voters are worried that the Trump administration may try to halt the vote count early, stoking disquieting levels of election anxiety on the eve of the midterms, a new poll shows.

Those fears arise as the Justice Department continues its aggressive efforts to challenge or wrest control over state voting processes, including threatening to prosecute uncooperative elections officials in California, after years of baseless claims of widespread election fraud by the Republican president.

Among California voters, 63% worry that the federal government may attempt to stop the counting of votes in California and other states in the days following Tuesday’s election, according to the poll from the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies, co-sponsored by The Times. Around half of voters — 49% — are not confident that the state’s election will be free of federal interference, the survey found.

“Both of the items, together, I think should raise alarms for threats against democracy in California,” said Matt Barreto, director of the UCLA Voting Rights Project.

California voters also have grievances with the state’s ballot propositions, a slate of 14 measures that include new taxes on billionaires and funding for cancer research. More than 8 in 10 of the state’s likely voters said that this year’s propositions were worded in a way that made them hard to understand and that special interests groups have too much influence over which propositions appear on the ballot.

Those concerns were shared across partisan lines, unlike how Californians felt about the threats posed to integrity of elections by the Trump administration. The high level of fear in the state reflects the fact that registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans by nearly 2 to 1 in California.

While 58% of Democrats are not confident the election will be free of federal interference, 27% of Republicans feel the same way, according to the poll. Similarly, 85% of Democrats are worried about the vote count being halted, compared with 22% of Republicans. A majority of California voters not affiliated with either party also expressed fears of interference by the Trump administration.

“I think voters are reflecting the reality,” Barreto said. “For the past month, the president and the Department of Justice have been attempting to directly interfere and take over California elections and voters are aware of that.”

The Department of Justice has sued California requesting the state set aside some 20,000 ballots the federal government has flagged as being potentially from noncitizens. Federal prosecutors have threatened criminal actions against election officials who refuse to comply. On Monday, the Trump administration escalated its effort to discount the flagged California ballots to the Supreme Court, which rejected its request to set aside the ballots.

Over the weekend, Newsom sent a letter to U.S. District Court judges across California sharing his “grave concerns federal agents will seek search warrants to seize ballots and ballot materials before the election results are certified” and urging judges not to comply.

Newsom wrote that President Trump’s history of weaponizing the Department of Justice to carry out his partisan agenda supports “legitimate concerns about further attempts to disenfranchise voters and undermine election integrity.” Newsom said this could include an attempt to prevent the certification of California’s election.

Concerns have also been raised about the presence of immigration agents around voting centers and performing door knocks and street stops to try to identify voter fraud.

Court rulings have recently dealt a series of blows to the Trump administrations efforts to intervene in the state’s voting process. Nonetheless, distress over election integrity remains extremely high, according to the poll.

Fears of federal meddling in the election are slightly higher among voters of color; 64% of Black voters and 54% of Latino voters said they are not confident the election will be free of interference, compared with 44% of white non-Hispanic voters, according to the poll.

Voters of color tend to lean more liberal, but the historic and ongoing efforts to disenfranchise minorities probably also contribute to this disparity, Barreto said.

Black voters have been a target of voter suppression efforts from the post-Civil War Reconstruction era through the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, he said. More recently, the Trump administration has singled out Latino Californians, accusing them of being noncitizens and voting illegally.

Professor Eric Schickler, co-director of the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies, described the level of alarm over election integrity in California and across the nation as without precedent.

He noted that both parties are distrustful about different things, with Republicans focused on allegations of fraudulent voting and Democrats fearful that the federal government may attempt to overturn results.

The last time America saw extreme political polarization paired with widespread claims of illegitimacy over election outcomes was during the Reconstruction era in the late 19th century, when there were widespread accusations of voter suppression in the South and of people voting illegally in the North, he said.

“That hasn’t happened really in the United States for well over a century now,” Schickler said, “so what we’re seeing now is really unusual, especially for a modern and long-lived democracy.”

Schickler said his highest level of concern with possible federal efforts to halt California’s vote count would be with congressional races. A handful of California races could play a pivotal role in deciding which party takes control of the U.S. House of Representatives. However, he said current polling data do not indicate that a Democratic path to victory in the lower house will rely on Golden State voters.

Trump in the past has criticized California for being one of the slowest states in the nation to finish tabulating its election results due to its large population and high number of voters who mail in their ballots. He’s also complained about late arriving ballots. Votes processed after election day in California typically contain a higher proportion of Democratic ballots than those processed on election night.

In addition, to highlight the unprecedented anxiety many California voters are feeling, the poll also shines a light on frustrations voters have with the state’s ballot propositions. Among likely voters, 82% agree that the wording of this year’s propositions made them hard to understand and 82% also agree that special interest groups have largely taken over which initiatives qualify.

In addition, 62% of likely voters feel that there are too many propositions on this year’s ballot. There are 14 statewide propositions, with many voters also seeing additional initiatives at a county and city level.

“The initiative is meant to be an outlet for voters when special interest groups lead legislators to fail to respond to their concerns,” Schickler said. “But now most voters believe the initiative process is itself too beholden to special interests.”

In the last 20 years, California’s ballot initiative campaigns have become increasingly controlled by large corporations or union groups. Part of this is due to the fact that it takes at least $50 million to run an effective campaign capable of reaching the state’s 23 million registered voters, making it challenging, but not impossible, to run a grassroots campaign, Barreto said.

The poll surveyed 2,787 registered voters in California from Oct. 19 to 25 in English and Spanish and has an overall estimated margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points. Among likely voters, the estimated margin of error is about 3 percentage points in either direction.

Times staff writer Kevin Rector contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s administration is on track to deport about 660,000 people over the past year, a new report released Thursday shows, as arrests ramp up across the country fueled by billions of dollars meant to supercharge his immigration agenda.

The report by the Migration Policy Institute shows deportations increased from 620,000 during the first year of Trump’s second administration. The numbers fall short of previous highs in the early 2000s and fail to meet the Trump administration’s promise, made when it received the billions from Congress, that the money would allow for 1 million deportations annually.

The report, based on publicly available data obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, comes after the Trump administration in January 2025 stopped publicly releasing similar figures compiled by the Department of Homeland Security.

Trump, a Republican, returned to power last year promising to stanch crossings at the southern border and crack down on immigration. His administration has pushed through restrictions on both legal and illegal immigration and launched high-profile arrest operations in its bid to force migrants out.

More people being deported, but not at all-time highs

The analysis found that the Department of Homeland Security carried out 980,000 deportations during the first 18 months of the second Trump administration.

During the last fiscal year — when the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement mechanisms were shifting into high gear — an estimated 660,000 people were deported.

According to MPI’s analysis, that’s a 26% increase from the yearly average from 2021 to 2024 during the administration of President Biden, a Democrat, but well below the 1.86 million deportations recorded in 2000, under President Clinton, another Democrat.

Despite the surging arrests, the report details some of the challenges to the Trump administration reaching its deportation targets.

Historically, many immigrants living in the U.S. without authorization were from Mexico and didn’t often seek asylum. But in recent years, migrants have come to the U.S. from a wide range of countries, which can make it more complicated to deport them. And immigration courts, which ultimately decide whether someone can be removed from the country, face more significant case backlogs.

Voluntary departures are increasing as are interior arrests

The report said voluntary departures — when people give up their cases in immigration court and agree to leave the country — were at an “all-time high,” with 170,000 choosing to do so since Trump returned to office in January 2025. People who choose voluntary departure could one day return to the U.S. But some immigrant advocates and lawyers say that people give up their court fight and agree to leave simply to get out of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, detention.

The Trump administration was also increasingly deporting people it arrested in the country’s interior, the report said, reflecting how it was stepping up enforcement against migrants who have been in the country for a long time. In 2025, about 28% of the people deported were arrested inside the country, but by July of this year that had risen to 39%.

Migrants arrested at the southern border still make up a large number of deportations, the report said — 69% of all deportations between Jan. 20, 2025, and July 31, 2026, were of people initially intercepted at the border.

People in the country longer may have more opportunities to contest their removal while the government typically has greater authority to fast-track deportations for people arrested at the border.

The analysis said most people deported have never been convicted of a crime, despite the Trump administration claiming to be targeting the “worst of the worst.” Previous data has showed the same.

In response to the MPI report, White House spokesperson Lauren Bis said: “President Trump has delivered the largest reduction in illegal immigration in modern history.”

Trump administration no longer regularly releases immigration data

Homeland Security stopped releasing similar data when Trump took office, making it difficult to track one of his key campaign promises. Figures the Trump administration has released are inconsistent and unverifiable.

The administration says it is transparent. On Tuesday, it released some of its own figures as part of a document boasting of its achievements on immigration, including that 1.2 million migrants have been deported or removed during Trump’s second term. The discrepancy could not immediately be reconciled.

In the absence of regular data, analysts and activists interested in immigration trends have relied on information obtained through lawsuits or limited and sporadic information released by federal agencies to track deportation data.

Santana writes for the Associated Press.

The top 1 percent in Peru captured 42 percent of all new wealth generated between 2019 and 2025, an analysis by the nonprofit group Oxfam has found.

The report, released on Tuesday, highlights growing inequality in the South American country and raises questions about how the government is addressing deepening social divisions.

“Economic inequality in Peru has remained stubbornly high for decades. And when people feel that the same people always win, that nothing changes and nothing can change, inequality starts to look less like an injustice and more like the natural order of things,” said Alejandra Alayza, the executive director of Oxfam in Peru.

“That is a dangerous kind of fatalism, and we must tear it down.”

The nonprofit told Al Jazeera in an email that the 42 percent figure represents an increase from the 2000 to 2019 period, when the top 1 percent captured about 39 percent of all new wealth.

Just 1.4 percent of new wealth from 2019 to 2025 went to the poorest 50 percent of the country’s population, according to the group.

Experts warn the trend bodes poorly for public faith in government and democratic institutions.

Oxfam worked with the Institute for Peruvian Studies, a think tank in Lima, to publish a report this month on Peruvians’ perceptions of inequality in their country.

The groups found that 84 percent of Peruvians believed their country is governed by powerful interests that shape politics to their benefit. More than 75 percent also said that wealthy corporations and individuals avoid paying their fair share of taxes.

The survey also suggested that public opinion was in favour of action to address the issue.

About 70 percent of respondents said they want the government to do more to reduce inequality, which a majority felt had limited access to services such as healthcare, employment, education and justice.

“The undeniable scale of public support for action to reduce inequality leaves no room for complacency,” Alayza said.

“Inequality is not a force of nature; it is made by political choices. And different choices can build a different Peru.”

Political instability

Peru’s rising inequality has been accompanied by a period of political turmoil, particularly in the presidential palace.

A stream of probes, scandals and impeachments has led to Peru being governed by nine presidents in the last 10 years.

The latest, right-wing President Keiko Fujimori, was sworn into office in July after a narrow race that saw voting delays and heated recriminations among the leading candidates.

Experts believe powerful interests have found opportunity amid the political tumult.

“It’s sort of a paradox. How can you have such a rotation among elites but still have a relatively narrow political-criminal-business elite that holds a lot of power? I think both things are true in Peru,” Will Freeman, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, a US-based think tank, told Al Jazeera.

Part of the political upheaval has come from clashes between the presidency and Peru’s powerful Congress, which has the power to impeach executive leaders on the basis of “moral incapacity”, an ambiguous term.

The repeated leadership shakeups have weakened Peru’s democracy, according to analysts.

In December 2022, for instance, then-President Pedro Castillo announced that he would illegally dissolve Congress in response to repeated attempts to impeach him.

His subsequent removal and arrest prompted widespread protests. The government of Castillo’s successor, Dina Boluarte, implemented a months-long crackdown on the demonstrations that rights groups say included widespread abuses for which there has been little accountability.

In the years since, the Peruvian government has also taken steps to weaken judicial oversight and hollow out anticorruption watchdogs.

The nonprofit Freedom House, which measures political freedom in countries around the world, ranked Peru as “free” in 2022. But its ranking dropped the following year to “partly free”, in light of the deadly clashes between security forces and protesters.

In its 2026 report, Freedom House maintained that Peru was only “partly free”, citing in part the denial of full political rights to certain groups, including Indigenous peoples.

“High-profile corruption scandals have eroded public trust in government, and the weakening of judicial independence has impacted the country’s governing bodies,” the nonprofit said.

Powerful interests, both licit and illicit, have taken advantage of those changes.

“The groups themselves are unstable and fluid,” said Freeman. “And yet, I think Peruvians are right to conclude that, generally, they are wielding outsized influence in defence of their own commercial interests or political power rather [than] in service of some kind of general welfare.”

WASHINGTON — Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islander adults have become more disillusioned with President Trump and Republicans as the Nov. 3 midterm elections approach, according to a new AP-NORC/AAPI Data poll, giving Democrats a substantial edge on major issues like the economy and health care.

The survey, which was conducted from Sept. 8-15 by AAPI Data and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, reveals that Trump’s standing on the economy has fallen among AAPI adults over the course of his second term.

About one-quarter of AAPI adults approve of the way Trump is handling his job as president overall. Only about 2 in 10 approve of his performance on the economy, which the vast majority of AAPI adults see as one of the most important issues for the upcoming election.

But although AAPI adults trust Democrats more than Republicans on a wide range of issues, views of the Democratic Party itself are still split.

Rebecca Larocco, a 45-year-old Korean American in Corning, Iowa, voted for Trump in 2016 and is leaning Republican in the midterm elections. She approves of his immigration policies but is unsure about Trump’s handling of the economy as the Iran war continues to compound gas prices.

“Where I’m at, it’s went up almost $1.50 (a gallon),” she said. “I didn’t expect to go into war at all, that has been definitely unexpected and I’m not sure… I’m just hoping they’ll do what they’re saying and get our economy back on track, get immigration and crime lowered.”

The economy is a top issue for AAPI adults

The economy remains top of mind for an overwhelming majority of the AAPI adult population when they consider the midterms. With the ongoing Iran war affecting gas prices and other costs staying elevated, Americans overall are deeply pessimistic about the state of the economy and see it as a high priority for the midterms. That includes AAPI adults — according to the poll, about 9 in 10 rank the economy as one of the most important issues for the upcoming election, and about 8 in 10 say this about the cost of living.

The economy, the cost of living and healthcare dwarf other issues for AAPI adults. About 7 in 10 AAPI adults say healthcare is one of the most important issues for the election, while only about half say this about foreign policy, crime, immigration, election fairness or climate change.

At the same time, Trump’s economic approval among AAPI adults has dropped about 10 percentage points over the course of the year, and there are other signs his popularity has waned with this group. In late 2024, just after the election, about 4 in 10 AAPI adults had a “somewhat” or “very” favorable view of Trump. That’s fallen to about 3 in 10 now.

“What the data show is that any gains that he made not only during the 2024 election — there was a bit of a honeymoon period that Trump enjoyed after the election before Inauguration Day — that has now largely disappeared,” said Karthick Ramakrishnan, founder and executive director of AAPI Data.

Len Takahashi, 57, of Universal City, Texas, describes himself as conservative but voted for Democrats in the last three presidential elections and for Republicans in midterm elections. For this midterm election, he is simply open to candidates who prioritize the economy.

“I would like policies that look in the best interest of the American public,” said Takahashi, who is Japanese American. “That could be bringing down spending, a balanced budget of U.S. spending, bringing down inflation, working towards a more stable economy and, lastly, just a better atmosphere between the far left and far right.”

AAPIs trust Democrats more on most issues but are not entirely sold on the party

Democrats have gained at Republicans’ expense since Trump returned to the White House when it comes to AAPI adults’ trust in handling many key issues.

In a March 2025 poll, AAPI adults were evenly divided over which political party would better handle the economy and immigration. Now, Democrats have a roughly 20-percentage-point advantage on both issues.

Meanwhile, around two-thirds of AAPI adults have a “somewhat” or “very” unfavorable view of the GOP. Only about one-quarter have a “somewhat” or “very” favorable view.

But while trust in the Democrats on specific issues has increased, AAPI adults are ambivalent about the party as a whole. About half, 48%, of AAPI adults have a “somewhat” or “very” unfavorable impression of the Democratic Party, while 44% have a “somewhat” or “very” favorable impression.

A separate AP-NORC survey of registered voters in September found, similarly, that while voters in general are deeply dissatisfied with Trump and the GOP, few think either party is capable of solving important problems.

Louise Rider, 40, is a Democrat living in Chicago. She believes Democrats are better than Republicans across all issues but says she’s unhappy with how the party has governed.

“I don’t think the Democrats are doing great, I think they need a lot of change as a party,” she said. “It’s kind of a helpless feeling, that nothing will get done with both parties unless there’s major changes.”

Some Republicans still stand behind Trump. James Finley, 74, of Lenox, Massachusetts, said Trump deserves some understanding because he cannot bring down high prices overnight. When it comes to Republicans in general, Finley is a little more critical.

“They’ve had the majority for a couple of years,” said Finley, whose ancestry includes Japanese heritage. “I think they could have done a little bit more or maybe a lot more in terms of passing certain things that I wanted to pass.”

Still, he sticks to the party line and because “all I ever hear from Democrats is to get Trump,” Finley said.

AAPIs concerned about fair midterm elections

As the election approaches, many AAPI adults are worried about problems with misinformation, legal challenges to the results, and voter suppression. About half of AAPI adults say it’s a “major problem” in U.S. elections that people who are eligible are not allowed to vote, while about two-thirds see foreign government attempts to influence results as a “major” problem.

Looking ahead to the November election, about half of AAPI adults are “extremely” or “very” concerned about fake or false information about the candidates, and about half also feel this way about legal challenges to the election results.

Finley is unsure if the voting process can be tightly monitored to prevent undocumented or unregistered people from attempting to vote.

But Takahashi, the conservative from Texas, is worried that Trump will try to manipulate the election.

He’s concerned, he said, that Trump would amplify claims of “fraud in the election system” should the midterms not go in his favor. “(He’ll) make that a point to distract the American public,” he said.

Tang, Jiang and Sanders write for the Associated Press. Tang reported from Phoenix and Jiang from New York. The poll of 1,023 U.S. adults who are Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander was conducted Sept. 8-15, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based Amplify AAPI Panel, designed to be representative of the Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is ±4.7 percentage points. This poll is part of an ongoing project exploring the views of Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders, which are usually not highlighted in other surveys because of small sample sizes and lack of linguistic representation.

Los Angeles County voters are concerned about a host of voter fraud issues that could disrupt the Nov. 3 general election, even though they have a high degree of confidence in local elections officials, according to a new poll funded by the nonprofit California Community Foundation.

Nearly three-quarters of respondents expressed concern that false rumors and misleading information online could confuse voters or make them believe that their vote won’t count, the poll found. Other top concerns included politicians interfering with the election and mail-in ballots getting lost, stolen or delayed.

Still, most of the voters surveyed expressed confidence in the county’s handling of election proceedings, with 68% saying L.A. County does an excellent or good job at running elections and counting ballots.

Once presented with information about how the county handles elections, that number rose to 72%. Around three-quarters of respondents also believe that the upcoming election will be fair, secure and accurate, the poll found.

The online poll was conducted from Sept. 30 to Oct. 6 by Tulchin Research, a San Francisco-based public opinion firm. It surveyed 500 voters in L.A. County considered likely to cast ballots in the Nov. 3 election and has a margin of error of 4.4%.

“Voters feel good about the local officials running their elections. So, reinforcing the fact that that is who’s in charge of the election and how the process works is reassuring to folks,” said Ben Tulchin, the polling company’s president. “It … reduces their anxiety about some of the outside criticism that California, L.A. County faces.”

The poll was funded by the California Community Foundation, which awards millions of dollars in grants to local charitable groups, to support the “A Count You Can Trust Coalition,” an initiative aimed at enhancing trust in local elections.

Recent polling has suggested that potential federal interference in the Nov. 3 election is a top concern statewide for California voters. The local poll was administered to shed light on how L.A. County voters feel, said former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who co-chairs the A Count You Can Trust group with Miguel Santana, who leads the California Community Foundation.

“This is the epicenter of the California vote,” Villaraigosa said. “The concern is not as great as it is statewide. Here in L.A. County, people seem to trust the vote to a greater degree.”

A recent poll by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies, co-sponsored by The Times, found that 61% of California voters identified interference by the Trump administration as a “major concern.” President Trump has fueled doubts over election integrity, spreading unverified claims of widespread voter fraud in blue states such as California.

Young voters and Latino voters expressed the lowest levels of confidence in how the county runs elections, the new poll found. The findings suggest those demographics need “a lot more reassurance” that elections are safe and that their votes matter, Tulchin said.

“It’s not surprising at all, and it means we’ve got work to do,” Villaraigosa said. “We got a lot of work to do to communicate to those people and to make it clear that, in fact, this vote can be trusted.”

Villaraigosa said he plans to focus his efforts on social media engagement and creating video content with poll workers to speak on how vote-counting works in the county.

The poll also asked respondents whether “things in Los Angeles County are going in the right direction or do you feel things have gotten pretty seriously off on the wrong track?” Most — 62% — said wrong track, and 26% said right direction.

Among voter concerns in the upcoming election, 18% listed the economy, the cost of living and inflation as their biggest worry, followed by election integrity, fraud and interference at 17% of respondents. Concerns about Republicans and Trump “winning or retaining power” came in third, with 16% of respondents saying that is their biggest concern.

Homelessness and immigration, two issues that have been prominent the L.A. mayoral race between incumbent Karen Bass and Councilmember Nithya Raman, ranked low in the list of concerns for the surveyed voters. Tulchin noted that the focus of the survey was on election integrity, which could have had an effect on what issues were top of mind of respondents.

The survey findings indicate that L.A. County voters seem to trust the county more than voters statewide. Still, just over 30% of surveyed voters have a fair or poor view of how the county runs elections, Villaraigosa said.

“They’re concerned, but what we found in this poll is that there are a number of people who, while concerned, do trust this county,” he said.

A century and a half after Chinese came to California, one in four Americans hold “very negative attitudes” toward Americans of Chinese ancestry, and a third question their loyalty to the United States, according to a nationwide poll scheduled for release today in Washington.

The survey of public attitudes toward Chinese Americans also found that, while an overwhelming majority of Americans admire Chinese Americans for their devotion to family, emphasis on education and diligence, nearly a quarter would not approve of marriage to a Chinese American.

Twenty-three percent of Americans said they are uncomfortable with the idea of voting for an Asian American candidate for president, compared to 15% for an African American, 14% for a woman and 11% for a Jew.

Thirty-four percent said Chinese Americans have too much influence in the U.S. technology sector. Virtually the same proportion said Chinese Americans are more loyal to China than to the United States.

Those findings would appear to reflect the residue of the federal prosecution of U.S. nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee, who was accused of transferring nuclear weapons data to unsecured computers on behalf of China.

The poll results, coming at a time of renewed tension between the U.S. and Chinese governments, disheartened experts who have long believed that the American public’s perception of Chinese Americans and other Asian Americans is disproportionately affected by the tone of diplomatic relations. Those experts felt that some of the responses showed that Americans are woefully ignorant about Asian Americans, even in California, where an estimated 40% of the nation’s Asian Americans live.

“We find these findings startling,” said Henry S. Tang, chairman of the Committee of 100, the Chinese American leadership organization that sponsored the telephone survey of 1,216 Americans. The group’s better-known members include cellist Yo-Yo Ma and architect I.M. Pei. “It makes you wonder how not only Chinese Americans, but Asian Americans, can shake this legacy of somehow being less than 100% Americans,” said UCLA political scientist Don T. Nakanishi, director of the Asian American Studies Center.

After a U.S. spy plane collided with a Chinese fighter jet along the coast of southeast China earlier this month, a rash of talk show hosts and radio personalities called for the internment of people of Chinese ancestry. Some even urged a boycott of Chinese restaurants and made fun of Asian accents.

The release of the survey today at the National Press Club is coordinated with the committee’s 10th annual conference during which several panels will discuss the implications of the poll.

The telephone survey, conducted March 1-14 by Yankelovich Partners in consultation with the Anti-Defamation League and the Marttila Communications Group, has a margin of sampling error of 3.1 percentage points.

The main thrust of the study was to probe the public’s attitudes toward Chinese Americans. The survey also tried find out whether attitudes toward Chinese Americans were largely the same or different from those toward Asian Americans in general. It asked 1,002 respondentstheir opinions about stereotypes of Chinese Americans; 214 were asked about identically worded stereotypes of Asian Americans, according to the study. The answers were nearly identical, suggesting that prejudice against Chinese Americans is a subset of broader prejudices against Asian Americans, the researchers said.

Asians Americans were second only to African Americans as undesirable marriage partners. A third of respondents said they disapproved of marrying blacks, compared to 24% for Asians, 21% for Latinos and 16% for Jews.

As for housing, Americans preferred to be neighbors of Asians rather than blacks and Latinos. Seventeen percent of the respondents said they would be upset if an Asian moved into their neighborhood, compared to 21% for Latinos, 19% for blacks and 9% for Jews.

Asian Americans are often told that they excel in technical skills, but lack leadership qualities because they tend not to be assertive.

The poll found that 7% of Americans would not want an Asian American chief executive for a Fortune 500 company, compared to 4% who would not want an African American, 3% a woman and 4% a Jew. And the highest percentage of those surveyed objected to having an Asian American supervisor–6%, compared to 3% to 4% for the other groups.

“What’s disheartening about all of this is these negative views will continue because they are so tied to the things that really relate to our future–high technology, trade, U.S.-China relations,” said political scientist Nakanishi.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

On Chinese Americans

A telephone survey of 1,216 Americans age 18 and older conducted March 1-14 asked about views of Asian Ameri-cans and Chinese Americans.

*

Attitudes toward Chinese Americans

Very negative: 25%

Positive: 32%

Somewhat negative: 43%

*

Positive sentiment toward Chinese Americans (% who said “probably true”)

Have strong family values: 91%

Are as honest as other businessmen: 77%

Are as patriotic as other Americans: 68%

Place a higher value on education than do most other groups in America: 67%

Have contributed much to the cultural life of America: 56%

*

Negative sentiment toward Chinese Americans (% who said “probably true”)

Have too much influence in the U.S. high-technology sector: 34%

Always like to be at the head of things: 32%

Are more loyal to China than to the U.S.: 32%

Hard to get close to, make friends with: 28%

Taking away too many jobs from Americans: 24%

*

Note: Margin of error plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

Source: Committee of 100