The National Asian-American Survey indicates that Asian American voters support Democrat Barack Obama over Republican John McCain by a substantial margin. However, a third of the voters still seem undecided, and could have an impact on the race in swing states, particularly Virginia, Florida and Nevada.

Four foundations and think tanks funded the survey, conducted by researchers for UC-Riverside, University of Southern California, UC-Berkeley and Rutgers in New Jersey. It was found that while 41% of Asian Americans support Obama, and 24% support McCain, 34% are still undecided. In breakdowns by country of origin, all groups favored Obama except Vietnamese, a traditionally Republican community that backs McCain over Obama 51% to 24%.

The survey showed that Asian Americans tend not to be as politically involved as other ethnic groups. Party identification among them is low – 32% identify with the Democratic Party, 14% with the Republican Party, 19% were independent and 35% described themselves as non-partisan.

An associate professor of political science at U.C. Berkeley, Taeku Lee said: “One of the striking features of Asian-Americans and their relationship to political parties is that 54% identify as either Independent or non-partisan, so a majority of Asian-Americans do not identify as either Democrats or Republicans.”

Lee added: “McCain gets his greatest support among Vietnamese-Americans. Among Japanese-Americans, and Asian-Indians Obama enjoys the greatest levels of support.”

In fact, Obama was also favored slightly among Filipinos, Korean and Chinese-Americans.