Why do Asian Americans vote Democrat? It’s a question that writers at both the Washington Post and the New York Times have been asking this month. It’s an important question because the Asian-American population is growing, and it’s an interesting one because by many measures, Asian-American voters look like stereotypical Republicans. As Thomas B. Edsall wrote in the NYT:

In some ways, Asian-American voters, combining personal wealth, entrepreneurial success, high incomes, traditional family values and a strong work ethic, would seem to be ideal recruits for the more conservative political party. Nonetheless, the Republican Party has steadily lost their support.

Asian Americans, as Edsall points out, have a higher median income than whites, Hispanics, or African Americans, are more likely to have a college degree, and have a lower percentage of out-of-wedlock births. They are also more likely than the average American to agree that “most people can get ahead if they work hard” (according to Pew). And yet, 73 percent of Asian Americans voted for President Obama in 2012. What’s up with that?

This is where Edsall and Cecilia Hyunjung Mo, who addressed the Asian-American Democratic phenomenon in the Washington Post, miss the elephant in the room. Both observe that in 1992, only 31 percent of Asian Americans voted Democrat and conclude that the GOP has “lost” the demographic. But as Mark Krikorian pointed out on Twitter:

Why Did Asian Amer. Abandon the GOP? https://t.co/KF2HMOPxdS They didn't switch parties; immigration changed makeup of Asian-Amer electorate

— Mark Krikorian (@MarkSKrikorian) November 5, 2015

T. Greer, the blogger referenced by Krikorian, points out that in 1990 there were about 7 million Asian Americans in the United States; by 2010, that figure had grown to about 17 million. The Current Population Survey (as cited by Pew) confirms that a majority of Asian Americans are foreign-born. And data from Pew shows that first-generation Asian Americans are more sympathetic to the left than those born in America. In other words, pace Edsall and Mo, the GOP may not have “lost” Asians who once voted for the party so much as failed to gain support among new immigrants.

The political preferences of Asian Americans matter much more than most people understand. Despite the Great Latino Panic in many anti-immigration circles, legal immigrants from Asia overtook (legal) immigration from Latin America in 2008, and in 2013, the Census Bureau found that China and India had overtaken Mexico as America’s first and second largest sources of immigration, legal or otherwise. Research also suggests this trend is likely to continue into the future.

So why the “shift” from 1992 to 2012? Basically, it looks as if the new Asian Americans are following the trajectory of many other immigrant groups in the past. Since the wave of Irish immigration in the 1840s, most newcomers have organized politically in the United States under the aegis of the Democratic Party. Each new group would get a share of the “spoils” system—elected offices, other plum jobs, contracts. Times have changed since Tammany Hall, but urban political machines continue to offer a welcome to new immigrants.

Ethnic politics in a spoils system setting is something many immigrants understand from the old country. Look at India, where political parties mix socialism, protectionism, identity politics, corporatism, and ethnic coalition-building. In many ways, the Democrats are a much cleaner, less corrupt, less dysfunctional version of what someone from India—or China or most other places—has understood government to be for his or her entire life. So with the exception of a few groups—e.g. Cuban and Vietnamese Americans, for example—the vast majority of immigrant groups in America have started out organizing on the left.

This isn’t just about Democratic “pull” factors. Both historically and today, Republicans have provided “push” factors. During the 19th century, Republicans inherited much of the old, anti-Catholic Whig and Know-Nothing vote. The GOP championed “Blaine Amendments” at both the national and state level that aimed to undermine parochial education and force the children of Catholic immigrants into public schools. Not surprisingly, many of those immigrants concluded the GOP was hostile to their interests. Republicans often opposed pro-union laws and other legislation and policy that naturally appealed to blue collar immigrants on the lower rungs of the economic ladder.

More recently, as Democrats gradually abandoned their claim to be the party of the white working class, Republicans have picked up the “Jacksonian” mantle of American nationalism. This undoubtedly has electoral advantages—and someone should represent the concerns of the middle of the country. But anything that looks like nativism can scare immigrants away. In his first candidacy, George W. Bush appealed to Jacksonian America in a way many Hispanics felt to be inclusive and welcoming; Donald Trump, not so much.

The Republicans eventually won over the “Great Wave” of 1880–1923 immigrants. By Reagan’s reelection in 1984, sixty years after the Wave ended, it was clear that their descendants were open to Jacksonian arguments.

Some of this occurred organically. The Irish and the Poles got richer, and went from being manual laborers to small business owners—i.e. they entered a class that was already voting GOP. The draft during World War II and the settlement of the suburbs afterward broke up traditional neighborhoods and, over time, the cohesive ethnic communities of the early immigrant era gradually dissolved. Second, third and fourth generation immigrants increasingly split their votes.

But the GOP also helped itself out. As the 20th century wore on, it made economic outreach to entrepreneurs a core strategy. And softer cultural outreach was arguably just as important. The right explicitly wove Catholic ethnic groups into the national narrative of the Greatest Generation in ways that, crucially, did not alienate its base, but spoke to shared concerns and points of pride. As Michael Novak has chronicled, Ronald Reagan was very conscious that four themes—“work, family, neighborhood, and peace through strength”—resonated with Catholic voters, and went out of his way to emphasize them at every turn.

One of the biggest questions in American politics is whether Republicans can repeat this success. This might be harder than it looks: The last time around, the immigrants could hop on the industrial-age escalator that led from factory floor to manager’s office. In the tech age, that escalator may no longer exist; certainly, moving upward won’t be as smooth and inevitable a process as in the old Blue Model economy.

It’s also not clear whether the new immigrants will trend right as they grow rich. As blogger Greer asks, “Were I to ask you to identify the likely political affiliation of a couple who both have post-graduate degrees, rarely attend Church, and live in an upper scale neighborhood in California or New England, what would you guess?”

This is where Edsall has a point—social issues matter to Asian Americans. On abortion, for instance, both the cultures from which the immigrants are coming and the American tech sector to which they are headed are at loggerheads with the Republican position. And so far, Silicon Valley has proven remarkably willing to vote for big regulation and big government in practice, even though it protests it in theory. Asian Americans, as we have seen, share these views.

Asian Americans, in other words, look a lot (as Edsall points out) like American Jews, who, despite educational and economic success, remained a staunchly blue voting bloc when all other groups swung rightward.

But Dems shouldn’t take the immigrants for granted. Culture can work both ways, and “longing to belong” has been a powerful force among immigrants in the past. Jacksonianism at its roots is the kind of Scots-Irish nationalism still found among the Protestants of Northern Ireland today. If Jacksonianism could attract Irish-American Catholics (and it did), it can absorb just about any immigrant group.

In fact, there are some early indications that this process may already be underway. As John Judis wrote in January, Hispanic voters are trending Republican as they grow more integrated into American society and more successful economically. He speculated that Asian Americans may be doing the same. The 2014 midterm exit polls on Asian Americans are muddled, but Republicans seem to have performed better than in 2012. Midterm electorates are different from Presidential-year electorates, though; the real test will come in 2016 and beyond.

Worse, from a Democratic standpoint, Asian Americans have real problems with much of the party’s agenda. From the use of racial-ethnic questions in college admissions to the ties between Democrats and teacher unions, the Democratic education agenda runs against vital Asian-American interests. The decay of the blue model will also divide Asian Americans from other Democratic constituencies. As recent arrivals, Asian Americans will balk at paying higher taxes and sacrificing public services to try to keep up with bloated pension payments to a previous generation of public officials.

One thing we know about Asian Americans is, like earlier immigrant groups, they will change America—and America will change them. How that shakes out, though, remains to be seen.