Republicans have been hoping that the combination of Hindu nationalism and relatively high income levels would lure large numbers of Indian-American voters to their side despite an established record of Indian-Americans voting for Democrats. A new poll suggests Republicans are going to be disappointed.
YouGov finds 72% Indian-American support for Joe Biden and just 22% support for Donald Trump. The presence of Sen. Kamala Harris, whose mother was an Indian immigrant, on the Democratic ticket surely does not help—45% of respondents in the poll said they were more likely to vote because of her—but this poll is also consistent with Indian-American voting in past elections. In fact, some post-election polls in 2016 showed Trump with just 16% or even 14% of Indian-American votes.
Trump has aggressively touted his strong relationship with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is using Hindu nationalism to boost his political standing in ways that of course Trump would appreciate. Modi rallied with Trump in Texas in 2019, and Trump made a splashy state visit to India last February, as the coronavirus quietly spread in the U.S.
At the time of that Trump visit to India, NPR reported on Republican hopes in a story headlined “One Group Whose Political Leanings May Be Changing: Indian Americans Who Are Hindu.”
“Most Indians, as you know, are highly educated. They are also relatively quite well-off, and they want low taxes, and they want people to be responsible for their own lives,” an “Indian Americans for Trump” leader told NPR. But even at that point, before Harris was on the ticket, a leading expert on Indian-American voting patterns disagreed.
”Not only are they immigrants, but also, they are brown-skinned, often in minority religions and discriminated in society in various ways,” Karthick Ramakrishnan, who runs the Asian American Voters Survey at the University of California, told NPR. “So, yes, people could try to drive a wedge between Indian Americans and other immigrant communities, but the reality of racial discrimination in the United States makes it more difficult.”
Ramakrishnan predicted at the time that “there's probably some movement towards President Trump but still overwhelming support for the Democratic Party and Democratic candidates as opposed to President Trump.” Well done! Good prediction!
The New York Times, on the other hand, seems to believe it’s surprising that Biden would have 72% support among Indian-Americans, describing a pair of 40-something Bay Area tech entrepreneurs as “somewhat of an exception for their generation” because they’re liberal, and nowhere in its coverage of the new poll does the Times note that Indian-Americans have voted overwhelmingly for Democrats in at least the last several presidential elections, or the growing number of prominent Democratic politicians with Indian backgrounds. Republicans have Bobby Jindal and Nikki Haley, true, but Democrats have Pramila Jayapal, Raja Krishnamoorthi, Ro Khanna, Ami Bera, Sara Gideon, and—to go a little deeper—Kumar Barve, Vin Gopal, Aruna Miller, Kshama Sawant, and Manka Dhingra. And, yes, Kamala Harris.