Around 60 per cent of the Indian-American the community that are US citizens and eligible to vote, intend to cast their ballot for the Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris and about 30 per cent plan to vote for former President Donald Trump in the next month’s Presidential elections, according to a survey by a leading think-tank with an expert noting that there is a modest shift away from the Democratic Party and greater support for Trump and the Republicans.
Milan Vaishnav, senior fellow and Director of the South Asia Program at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told ANI that Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, and Michigan are important swing states where Indian-Americans are large enough in numbers to be greater than the margin between the two Presidential nominees.
The outcomes of Indian-American Attitudes Survey 2024, conducted by Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in partnership with YouGov, were published on Monday.
Milan Vaishnav said it was a follow up of survey they did four years back.
“This is a new survey, that we just released on Monday. It’s actually a follow-up to a survey we did in 2020 on the eve of that year’s US Presidential elections. It’s one of the first systematic surveys that we did nationally representative surveys of Indian-Americans across the United States, across all 50 states and we thought it was important again with a pivotal election just days away that we take a fresh look at how Indian-Americans are thinking about the vote. I think our headline finding is that around 60 per cent of the Indian-American community that are citizens, so therefore eligible to vote, intend to cast their ballot for the Democratic Nominee Vice President Kamala Harris, about 30 per cent plan to vote for Former Republican President Donald Trump,” he said.
“I think it’s important to point out that this does represent a shift from what we found four years ago we see a modest shift away from the Democratic Party and greater support for Trump and the Republicans in November 2024,” he added.
Mr Vaishnav spoke of gender gap and said it’s first important to disaggregate the shift.
He said according to the survey, larger number of Indian American women voting for Vice President Harris, but men were less supportive of her candidacy.
“One of the most striking findings that we found, and this is an entirely new thing right now, is that there is a very big gender gap which has opened up within the community. We have traditionally not seen Indian-American men and Indian-American women voting very differently. Their preferences seem to be more or less aligned. But this time we see a discrepancy. A larger number of Indian-American women voting for Vice President Harris, but men less supportive of her candidacy. So in fact, almost the entirety of the shift away from the Democratic nominee towards Trump is driven by Indian-American men, and within that, Indian-American men who are below the age of 40,” he said.
“And one thing that we’ve seen throughout this election cycle is across different demographic communities, African-Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans as well, that there does seem to be this gender divide with young men voting very differently from other members of their community,” he added.
Elaborating on gender divide among voters, Mr Vaishnav listed several factors including inflation.
“When you ask Indian-American voters why they don’t associate themselves with the Democratic Party, why is that they choose not to identify with the party that it has long been the natural home for Indian-Americans for the last several election cycles, they say things like and they believe that the democratic party is too weak on illegal immigration, they are quite concerned about inflation, about prices, about job opportunities and a significant percentage of them believe that the Democrats and left has been too involved in identity politics. So these are some of the things that we are seeing in the data, particularly amongst men,” he said.
He said Indian-American communities is one most politically active communities.
“We have a community that is growing very rapidly that has grown by more than 50 per cent between 2010-2020. In some ways, this is a very new community as 70 per cent of people of Indian origin either arrived in the United States or were born after the year 2000. We sometimes think of the Indian-American community as quite old in the US, but in fact the bulk of that population is quite new. When you look at their settlement patterns, you see in particular states like Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia and Michigan, are four of the most important that swing states. Indian Americans now are large enough in terms of numbers to be greater than the margin of victory between the two Presidential nominees…” he said.
“If you look at any measure of socioeconomic performance, take median household income, take average household educational attainment, Indian-Americans are truly outliers. Even among Asian Americans, their performance rates off the charts. And so that means that they are seen by both political parties as sought-after donors, as influencers in their community, as vote mobilizers. So I think we’re seeing both the Republican side as well as Democratic side really kind of try and pull out all the stops to try and nudge those few undecideds towards either side,” he added.
Mr Vaishnav said the Indian-American voter behaviour is driven largely by bread and butter issues in some sense that is pretty consistent with how American voters across the board vote.
“So this tops the three issues that concern the Americans when it comes to how they will cast their ballot on election day. The first is inflation and prices, that’s something that has been dominating news coverage over the past year or so. Number two is jobs in the economy, another economic issue – 13 per cent of respondents said that’s the most important issue but it’s tied with the third issue that is very salient, especially for democratic partisans and for women, which is abortion.”
“One of the striking findings from this report actually is how salient abortion has become this electoral cycle as an issue when we ask people, for instance, if you had to contribute money to a charity right what sort of charity would you be interested in giving money to you one of the top responses is an organization that is pro-choice that is trying to expand abortion access and reproductive freedoms. So this is something that has been a real, a kind of contentious issue in the American public, and we’re seeing it show up in this data as well,” he said.
Mr Vaishnav said there are five Indian-American members of Congress and that number may go up to seven.
“We have two Democratic candidates who are in tight races, one in Arizona, one in Virginia. So five could become seven. Of course we are seeing for the first time a presidential nominee, Kamala Harris, who has an Indian origin. We are seeing voters being catered to in ways that we’ve never seen before, but I think there’s something else also that we should acknowledge and it’s harder to quantify and see, but if you look at the corridors of political power and who is making important decisions behind the scenes in places like the White House, the state department, the treasury department, you name it, Indian- Americans are increasing their numbers in those places,” he said.
“As staffers on Capitol Hill working for members of Congress and senators. I expect that those trends are only going to increase, and I think that’s another very important source of Indian-American strength within the larger ecosystem of politics and policy in this country,” he added.