Dr. Chris Suh, Associate Professor of History, was recently interviewed about Asian-American voting patterns and political affiliation in the lead up to the November election. Suh was quoted in the article “What a trip to Georgia’s ‘Seoul of the South’ says about the Asian American vote,” centered Asian-American voters in Gwinnett County in Northeast Atlanta. Asian-American voter turnout was 84% higher in Georgia in the 2020 elections compared with 2016, drawing increased national attention to voting patterns among this demographic group, in particular, in 2024. Suh weighs in on these dynamics, including how the COVID-19 pandemic and surge of related anti-Asian hate contributed to turnout and party affiliation, in this article as well as a separate NBC News video segment, “Breaking down key issues motivating Asian American voters this election cycle.” Emory student Jin Namgoong was also quoted in the “Seoul of the South” piece. Read the full NBC news article here, along with an excerpt quoting Suh:

Asian Americans in Gwinnett lean more Republican than the racial group does nationally and align more with voters regionally, said Chris Suh, an associate history professor at Emory University in Atlanta. Many are also newer immigrants, so specific ethnicity — Korean or Vietnamese, for example — is more of an identity than simply being Asian American. And because of that, they require long-term investment, and their votes are still up for grabs, experts say.

Suh is a historian of race, ethnicity, and inequality, specializing in transpacific connections between the United States and East Asia and Asian American history. His first book, The Allure of Empire: American Encounters with Asians in the Age of Transpacific Expansion and Exclusion was published by Oxford UP in 2023).