Are most of the 4 million Filipinos in the US MAGA loyalists and diehard Trump supporters, as social media so confidently declares?

No.

The numbers do not support the claim. Nearly a third (28%) of Filipino American voters said they would support Donald Trump before the last election cycle — the highest share among Asian American groups, according to the 2024 AAPI Voter Survey. But 28% is not “most.” Nearly two-thirds said they would vote for Kamala Harris over Trump. That aligns with Pew Research Center data showing that 68% of Filipino American registered voters identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party, compared with 31% who lean Republican.

The perception problem has less to do with arithmetic than with volume. MAGA supporters are loud, organized, and algorithmically amplified. Filipino American Trump backers are no exception. Their visibility — especially online — creates the illusion of dominance.

But the more useful question is not whether most Filipinos are MAGA. They are not. The more interesting question is why a visible minority is.

Alignment, not rupture 

The Republican Party that once housed establishment conservatives like the Bushes and the Cheneys has been reshaped by the MAGA movement. Party identity now means loyalty to Trump. For Filipino Americans who were already culturally conservative — religious, socially traditional, wary of liberal social change — the shift did not feel like a rupture. It felt like alignment.

Many older Filipinos, especially those from military families or more recent immigrant cohorts, are deeply shaped by Christian conservatism. Opposition to abortion, same-sex marriage, expansive welfare programs, and progressive gender politics resonates. The GOP’s “tough on crime” posture and hardline immigration rhetoric can also appeal to immigrants who arrived through legal pathways and value order and discipline. In this context, MAGA politics does not appear radical; it appears familiar.

Yet beneath these policy preferences lies something more unsettling: a narrowing definition of who counts as a “real American.”

When Elon Musk posted on X that American culture is rooted in its “English-Scots-Irish origin” and that no one would die to defend a “multicultural economic zone,” he distilled a worldview central to MAGA politics — the idea that American identity is culturally fixed, Anglo-derived, and under threat. This message resonates with a strain of white Christian nationalism that animates Trump’s rhetoric.

Some conservative Filipinos, consciously or not, lean toward this vision. They seek proximity to a version of Americanness that was never designed to include them fully. They may distance themselves from other minority communities, adopt the language of cultural decline, or dismiss pluralism as dilution. The hope — sometimes implicit — is acceptance.

But American culture has never been singular. It has always been layered, contested, and remade by immigrants — including Filipinos.

The generational shift makes this clearer. Three-quarters of Filipino immigrants are naturalized citizens, but a growing share of Filipino Americans are US-born. Younger Filipino Americans navigate multiracial schools, workplaces, and social networks from an early age. They experience racialization directly. Unsurprisingly, they are sympathetic to civil and immigrant rights causes and lean heavily Democratic—mirroring the 88% of Asian Americans aged 18 to 29 who identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party.

Even within a community that is overwhelmingly Christian — 74%, more than half Catholic — there is nuance. Recent polling shows that 74% of Filipino American adults believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases, and 69% want Congress to guarantee nationwide access. That is not the profile of a uniformly MAGA electorate.

So why does the myth persist?

Because a vocal minority is easier to see than a quieter majority. Because social media rewards outrage over proportion. And because it is convenient — both for critics and for partisans — to flatten a diverse community into a caricature.

Filipino Americans are not a monolith. They are religious and secular, conservative and progressive, immigrant and native-born, military-affiliated and activist, business-oriented and labor-rooted. Some are drawn to MAGA politics. Most are not.

The data is clear. The myth is louder. – Rappler.com

Rene Ciria-Cruz is a Filipino-American journalist and writer who has worked extensively in U.S. and Filipino media. He served as US bureau chief for Inquirer.net, the official site of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, a major Philippine news outlet. During his tenure he also wrote and edited for other publications and sites including PositivelyFilipino.com and has contributed to U.S. newspapers like the San Francisco Chronicle and San Francisco Examiner as well as magazines such as California Lawyer Magazine and Filipinas Magazine.