Latino voters are getting a lot of justified attention this election year

Latino voters are getting a lot of justified attention this election year as having the potential to determine the outcome of the presidential race in several key battleground states – and thus the entire election.

But Asian Americans’ votes also could be critical in battleground states, according to a report released Tuesday by the National Asian American Survey.

A companion report on Asian Americans’ views on a number of issues was also released Tuesday.

Karthick Ramakrishnan, an associate professor of political science at UC Riverside, is director of the survey and co-author of the reports. Taeku Lee, chairman of the political science department and professor of law at UC Berkeley, is the other author.

The survey is based upon nearly 3,400 interviews.

Nationwide, 43 percent of Asian American likely voters support President Obama, while 24 percent back Mitt Romney. But nearly a third are undecided.

“When compared to the general electorate, and even the Latino electorate, the Asian American vote is very much up for grabs at this late stage in the presidential campaign,” Ramakrishnan said in a statement.

People of Asian and Pacific Islander ethnicity comprise 15 percent of California’s population, the second highest proportion in the country, after Hawaii’s 57 percent.

President Obama holds big leads over Mitt Romney in both heavily Democratic states.

But Asian-Americans also comprise a rapidly growing percentage of the population in tossup states such as Virginia – which is now 7 percent Asian – Nevada and North Carolina. One in six Asian Americans lives in a battleground state, the election report says.

As the 2008 National Asian American Survey found, there are big differences among Asian and Pacific Islander ethnic groups in political affiliation.

People of Hmong, Indian and Korean ancestry are most likely to support Democrats.

For years, Vietnamese Americans were the most reliably Republican Asian American voters. But the new survey found that Filipino Americans now have an even stronger identification with the GOP than Vietnamese Americans.

Asian Americans are concerned about the same issues that other American voters view as priorities, the survey found. The economy and jobs are the top concerns of Asian Americans, with health care and education next.

The survey also found that most Asian Americans support the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.