With their candidate, President Barack Obama, locked in a tight race against Republican nominee Mitt Romney, Democrats are counting on Asian-American voters to push them to victory in November, the party's national chairwoman said on Monday.

"We know the AAPI vote is going to be crucial in battleground states," Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the chairwoman, told an audience of party activists from the Asian-American and Pacific Islander community on Monday before the start of the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina.

In swing states such as Virginia, Nevada, Pennsylvania and her home of Florida, any margin of victory, if it comes, will be small, Wasserman Schultz said in urging the grassroots Democrats to work hard for every vote.