In an exit poll by the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF), 87% of Asian American voters in New Jersey chose Democratic candidate Cory Booker in the U.S. Senate race. The shift toward Democrats was most pronounced in Palisades Park and Edison. The poll also pointed to barriers to voting, including more than half of respondents saying they were asked to show ID.
In the midterm elections, 87% of Asian American voters in New Jersey cast their ballots for Democratic Sen. Cory Booker. According to a report by NJ Spotlight News that was based on an article in the South Asian community outlet Central Desi, the figure comes from an exit poll led by the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF). The number is from the U.S. Senate race, the top contest on the ballot.
AALDEF, together with nine partner organizations including AAPI New Jersey, deployed 77 volunteers at 15 sites from Fort Lee to Atlantic City. More than 900 people responded to the multilingual survey, and about half of them were Asian American. According to the organization, Booker's support among Asian Americans was higher than that of the leading Democratic candidates in the last two New Jersey elections. In the 2025 gubernatorial race, 82% said they chose Mikie Sherrill, and in the 2024 presidential election, 52% said they chose Kamala Harris. The change was greatest in Palisades Park and Edison, where support for Harris and Trump was split about evenly in the 2024 survey.
The top concern cited by Asian American respondents was the economy, including the cost of living and jobs. Democracy followed at 41%, health care at 40% and immigration at 27%. In the 2025 survey, only 16% named immigration as a major concern.
Problems in the voting process were also reported. Although New Jersey does not require ID to vote, 53% of Asian American respondents said they were asked to show it. Several counties lacked notices in the languages required by federal law, and in one case, a Bengali-speaking voter was improperly denied the right to assist his son in voting. AALDEF said law enforcement personnel were present at some polling places, and that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents were at an early voting site in West New York. Amber Reed, co-executive director of AAPI New Jersey, said, in effect, that the state and counties "must do more" to remove barriers to voting for voters of color.
Palisades Park and Fort Lee are leading Korean American communities in Bergen County. In this survey, Palisades Park was cited as the area with the greatest change, and Fort Lee as a place where a polling site was set up. However, the original report gave only figures for Asian Americans as a whole and did not disclose results for Korean American voters separately. The figures therefore cannot be read directly as the Korean American vote in Bergen County.