The year 2008 is proving to be the year Black and Latino voters step to the forefront and play a pivotal role in deciding not only the eventual Democratic nominee but also the next president of the United States. But what about Asian-American voters?

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, those identifying as Asian American represented 4.4 percent of the total U.S. population in 2006. Note that the category for Asian Americans consists of some 30 ethnic groups, including Chinese, Filipinos, Koreans, Japanese and Vietnamese. In today's critical contests in Texas and Ohio, Asian Americans represent 3.4 and 1.4 percent of the total population, respectively. Texas, Hawaii (40 percent), California (12.4 percent), New Jersey (7.4 percent) and New York (6.9 percent) have the largest Asian-American populations.

As they represent "only" 4.4 percent of the total U.S. population, pundits speculate Asian Americans haven't yet reached the critical mass to represent a swing vote. But the fact that Sen. Barack Obama has consistently lost badly to Hillary Clinton in the Asian-American community has led some, including TIME, to ponder: "Does Obama Have an Asian Problem?"

In California, where Asian Americans make up 8 percent of the voting electorate, a CNN exit poll found they voted 3-to-1 in Clinton's favor, reports TIME. Eighty-seven percent of Asian-American voters went for Clinton in New York; in New Jersey, she took 73 percent of the vote.

Why the Obama/Asian disconnect? Much has been made of a purported "Black/Brown" divide between Blacks and Latinos, a belief disputed by many, including William Ramos, director of the Washington, D.C., office of the national Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO) Educational Fund. Ramos flatly rejects the notion that Latinos wouldn't vote for a Black candidate, calling the idea an insult. "We've proven that Latinos will cross party lines and vote for a white, Black or Asian person. We will even vote against a Latino if that Latino is not meeting our expectations," Ramos says.

But does that same spirit exist in the Asian-American community when it comes to a Black candidate, such as Obama?

Oliver Wang, a sociology professor at California State University at Long Beach, told TIME, "The images of African Americans that get exported to other cultures are not often positive. It's not unusual to find new immigrants who have never had a meaningful, personal encounter with an African American. So there's a very uniformed bias."

But many political observers believe that to pin Obama's disconnect with Asian-American voters solely on race would be a disservice. The New Republic says that Clinton may be benefiting from the many appointments her husband made of Asian-American officials during his presidential term, as well as the support he received from the community during his 1996 reelections campaign.

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