Ever read a poll and ask, “Did they bother to ask any

Ever read a poll and ask, “Did they bother to ask any Asian Americans?” I’ve been asking that for as long as I’ve been in journalism. I remember one so-called “comprehensive” poll taken years ago about sex. Everyone was represented but not Asian Americans. Don’t we have sex?

We need better polling.

Yet, in most cases, polls conveniently exclude us by their methodology. To the average pollster, it takes way too much effort to make sure that in a random sample, we show up in numbers indicating how we feel about a given topic. It allows us to be conveniently ignored, and consequently left out of any serious debate on the most important topics in society.

This systematic exclusion of Asian Americans from polling comes at a price. Polls are the heartbeat of the modern political landscape and help drive public policy. Yet, standard operating procedure for pollsters renders Asian Americans DOA without a pulse.

As minorities become the majority in this country, it seems inexcusable that pollsters can still operate as if it’s an all-white public. We can no longer let wimpy, non-inclusive, non-representative polls perpetuate the notion of Asian American invisibility.

That’s especially true in California, where Asians are more numerous than African Americans.

The answer?

More pollsters should be like The Field Poll, the independent non-partisan polling organization based in San Francisco. In its new poll this week, The Field Poll reveals that a majority of California voters support the Affordable Care Act by 54 percent to 37 percent.

Ninety-nine percent of all polls would stop there. And that’s the problem.

Ask pollsters about Asian Americans in their random samples and there’s more beef in your average chow fun.

There just aren’t enough Asians included in a typical sample to say anything about Asian Americans.

But not in this new poll. With added funding from the California Wellness Foundation, The Field Poll’s Mark DiCamillo was able to go several steps further. Beyond doing translations in language, DiCamillo also oversampled Asian Americans in the California voter rolls. That simple tactic assured that in racial breakdowns, we’d have more than a standard monolithic view of Asian America.

Now we can say with confidence, in the nation’s most Asian state, the majority of voters who support health care reform were indeed bolstered by support from Asian Americans.

We can even drill down to four subcategories.

Korean Americans were in support 63 percent to 23 percent.

Vietnamese Americans were 62 percent to 24 percent.

But there was some divergence when considering Chinese American and Filipino American voters.

Chinese Americans supported health care reform by just 45 percent to 31 percent.

These lower numbers could mean a coming rift in multi-generational Asian American communities, as well as a key difference between native-born Chinese Americans and other Asian immigrant communities.

That lower number in support could also mean that Chinese Americans, with more history in the U.S. and greater incomes from businesses, have doubts about the potential costs of health care. It may indicate that Chinese Americans could be wooed by Republicans on certain economic issues.

But maybe not. We won’t know unless inclusive pollsters continue to see if a trend emerges.

Another interesting number from the Chinese American sample is derived when you combine the 45 and 31 percent. Seventy-six percent responding means 24 percent didn’t respond or were undecided. That could mean people who come from homeland societies, where taking a political stand comes at a price, still aren’t comfortable sharing their views, even in the U.S.

The numbers, however, were even more divergent for the Filipino Americans. They were the least supportive of the health care law, with 39 percent for and 33 percent against. Those combined numbers also gave the Filipinos the largest unresponsive or undecided number at 28 percent. It could be because a large number of Filipinos are in the health care field and didn’t feel comfortable responding.

The Filipinos did have the unique polling problem of having Spanish-surnames (like me), which means it was harder to identify a large enough sample as Asian Americans. Still, I’m surprised the Filipinos were more like the Chinese in their muted support for health care compared to the Korean or Vietnamese.

What do you do with all this data?

You can compare it with the results for other races, of course. The Field Poll put white voters at 46 percent in support, 45 percent opposed.

African Americans were overwhelmingly in support, 88 percent to 5 percent.

Latinos were not quite as strong but still overwhelmingly in support with 67 percent, and just 23 percent opposed.

The Asian American bloc was not quite so united when broken down by our subgroups. But we still don’t have a perfect picture of the community. For example, the poll left out Indian Americans, a large national Asian American subgroup. Ironically, in California, the biggest Asian American donors to the Obama campaign are Indian Americans.

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