When the New York Times published this article about the recent primary in Gotham city, "Poll finds Asians overwhelmingly backed Liu," they were merely stating the obvious. Anyone who has done any election work, knows that people are often partial to members of their own tribe. Not only will they be more passionate about turning out to vote, but they will also cross party lines to do so.

But looking deeper at the poll, it was interesting to see how those numbers broke down in terms of three different ethnic groups within the Asian American community and how they voted for New York City Councilman John Liu in his race to become the City Comptroller.

The poll, which interviewed 790 Asian-American voters, found that 84 percent of them supported Mr. Liu, though it varied substantially between ethnic groups. Mr. Liu earned the votes of 95 percent of the Chinese-Americans polled, 73 percent of the Korean-Americans polled, and 53 percent of South Asian-Americans polled.

From these breakdowns, it seemed that Chinese Americans felt the greatest allegiance to Liu, who is Chinese American himself, followed by the Korean Americans. South Asians performed better than the general population who gave Liu 38% of the vote, but it was not as strong a bloc as the two East Asian groups.

What does this say about the "Asian American" community?  Does it mean the bonds between Chinese and Korean Americans are tighter than those of South Asians and East Asians?  And if so, what can we do to increase those bonds among all the ethnicities so that the when we speak of an "Asian American community", it truly speaks to all segments. 

I'm not advocating that people should merely vote for candidates of their own ethnicity. I think politics and world view are more important. (Think Bobby Jindal, Joseph Cao and any other right-wing Asian American.) But I do think the devil in these details provides us with some food for thought in terms of strengthening a unified Asian American and Pacific Islander community.