'Indian American Young Men May Vote For Trump'

'One of the big findings is that younger men seem to have shifted towards the Republican Party.'
'In 2020, about 23% of younger men said they would vote Trump.'
'Now that number is 48%.'
'It is like a 25 point shift, and you don't actually see shifts that big in surveys.'

Just a weekend away from the November 4th US election, a new survey published by the Carnegie Endowment sheds light on the political preferences and concerns shaping Indian American voters -- many of which challenge traditional assumptions.

Authored by Sumitra Badrinathan, Devesh Kapur and Milan Vaishnav, and conducted in partnership with YouGov, this nationally representative survey of Indian American citizens reveals continued strong support for the Democratic party, alongside a slight rise in support for Republican candidate Donald J Trump.

The survey provides timely insights into a crucial voter bloc.

"We always assume that for Indian Americans, we have this attachment to India, and people are really going to cast their votes on the basis of that. We're really not seeing that. In fact, the Indian American communities providing survey answers that are like every other American. They're saying they care about inflation and prices. They're saying they care about abortion. A lot of them are saying they care about climate change. But very few are saying that the way that a government deals with India is what's going to impact their role," Sumitra Badrinathan, assistant professor of political science at American University and one of the survey's co-authors, tells Rediff.com US Special Correspondent Abhijit J Masih.

What were some of the challenges you faced in conducting this survey, particularly within such a diverse and geographically spread community?

I think the challenges are sort of intertwined with the motivation for doing this. The motivation is that you've seen other surveys that are out there calling different communities in the US; typically, they try to be representative by race.

So you'll get representation by White Caucasian, non Hispanic, Asian or representation by black communities.

But the problem with this approach is that if you disaggregate Asian into country of origin, those sub samples are really small, and more importantly, they are not representative.

It's possible that in an Asian American survey, there will be a sub sample of 200 Indians, maybe they are all mostly from California.

The challenge was getting a representative sample. And that means that whatever conclusions we draw from this survey, we can now make inferences about the entire Indian American community as a whole in the US.

That's just a methodologically difficult thing to do, because I think we have to rely on people self selecting into the survey.

And only a certain type of people wants to spend 20 minutes online doing a survey.

It was probably one of the hardest things to do, and that is why there aren't that many sub community surveys out there.

But the advantage of doing this is that now we can cut the data even further and say, within the Indian American community, this is what men look like, this is what women look like, which is not something you can do very easily with other surveys.

Based on the survey results, what do you foresee as key trends or developments in the Indian American political landscape moving forward?

One of the big findings is that younger men seem to have shifted towards the Republican Party.

In 2020, about 23% of younger men said they would vote Trump.

Now that number is 48%. It is like a 25 point shift, and you don't actually see shifts that big in surveys.

We'd have to do another survey four years from now to see if that trend holds. But I think at the very least, what it means is that that particular community is in some way up for grabs.

They've shown that their vote is movable. It might be movable again in the future, or it might sort of crystallize and stay there.

It is one of these demographics where I think both political parties can see an opportunity to try to lock down.

This drift toward Trump appears to be driven by Indian American men, particularly young men born in the United States? What draws young Americans of Indian descent to Trump?
What appeals to them about his politics?

So just a caveat, it's not young men born in the United States. It's young men separately and men born in the United States separately.

The reasons about why the shift is a little bit harder to speculate. We didn't necessarily ask this question, but if you were to speculate, there are just a lot of things that have changed since 2020.

The information environment has changed. There is this desire for new politics. The gender of the candidate has also changed in four years.

So it could be one of those factors, or a combination of them. We didn't ask questions to be able to answer that in this survey.

The survey shows a stark gender gap, especially among younger voters. What factors do you believe are influencing the different voting patterns among Indian American men and women?

We did ask about what issues are the most important for people when they decide which party to vote for.

If you split that by gender, you see that women are significantly more likely to say that they care about abortion as an issue.

That was not true in 2020. It seems to be an issue that is more salient now, but is significantly more salient for women.

It looks like that's guiding them. But then if you see issues like jobs and the economy or inflation and prices, there's no gender difference, both men and women say it's important.

So maybe partly the issue of abortion and all of the discourse attached to it, but it could be a bunch of other reasons too.

The survey finds that Indian Americans remain solidly behind the Democratic party, though there is an uptick in support for Republican candidate Donald Trump.
So why is support declining for the Democrats?

First of all, I think the uptick is very small. It's only about a 10 percentage point decrease in identification with the Democrats.

Statistically, to be able to say that that's different from 2020 you would have to double the margin of error.

So it's on the cusp. I wouldn't read too much into that, but assuming the numbers are actually telling us what's going on.

I think one thing that's interesting is the way people identify themselves as liberals or conservatives.

The number of people in the sample who identify themselves as liberal has actually increased over time.

So it's interesting because it shows that people have become more liberal, but they are less likely to say that they support the Democrats and more likely to say that they are independent, even if their political policies have not changed.

So just to speculate that might indicate that people are just dissatisfied with the Democratic party, not that they are necessarily becoming more conservative over time.

For non-Indian Americans' understanding, why have Indian Americans traditionally been supportive of the Democrats?
Do you think this got a major thrust after the Clinton presidency?

We haven't really had very good data over time to sort of establish this.

There are only two options in the US, and one is a party that sort of aligns more with rights for the minority, and that is the Democratic party.

This shows up in our data too, both in 2020 and now, which is that Indian Americans are deeply dissatisfied with Republican policies, even if it's not about identification with the party.

They just don't align with what the group that moves over here to the US thinks about politics.

So in many ways, the Democratic party has changed over time, as has the Republican party.

We know that the Republican party has gotten a little bit more extreme and that the gap between them has grown.

The party that you support is the one that comes closest to your views.

And it's clear from our survey data that a lot of the Republican policies just don't sit very well with this group.

Have any emerging Republican policies resonated positively with this demographic?

People do say that inflation and price rise is a top issue for them. That doesn't necessarily mean that it translates to policy, because we're not seeing that much Republican support in the sample.

We asked this question on how people rate politicians, both Democrat and Republican, on a scale from zero to 100 where if you don't feel very good about the person, you say zero, you feel very good about the person.

We didn't come up with the question. It's from the American national election survey.

In that question, you see that even Republicans rate Kamala Harris not too terribly, but Democrats rate Trump really badly.

So I guess it's just to show that the gap between Democrats and Republicans on Democratic politicians isn't that large.

It's partly about policy and partly about the fact that even those who identify as Republicans may not see the Republican party as very close to what they desire in politics.

With just a few days to go, what strategies could the Harris campaign employ to maximize support within the Indian American community, especially among independents and young voters?

I'm a political scientist and I read a lot of the literature on political behavior, which involves both persuading people to change sides or to vote for a certain party, but also mobilizing them.

A lot of studies that have been conducted show that it's much harder to persuade, but it's much easier to mobilize.

So if you're faced with people that are not voting the way you want them to vote, and you want to convince them, it's going to be much harder for you to say, please change the way you've been traditionally voting and vote for us.

But it's a lot easier to put your resources towards a group that you know is likely to vote for you, but you're not sure is going to turn out to vote.

Now, these are not necessarily new insights. I know that.

Both campaigns now employ a lot of people working on data research and so on and so forth.

So I'm sure they're already doing these things, but it's just to underscore that we do know from previous research that it's easier to mobilize than it is to change people's opinions.

How do you foresee the evolving political alignment of Indian Americans impacting their engagement and influence in US politics over the next decade?

I think the answer to this question is going to depend on advocacy that's coming from India.

We know that there is a lot of civil society type organizations that are working within politics to try to advocate for the community, supporting one particular set of policies versus both sides of the aisle.

I think what happens to the community as a whole is going to depend on how much these advocacy groups are empowered.

I mean both financially from external donors, but also to what extent the administration in power, whatever administration that's going to be, gives them a platform.

And so I think that's something that is going to evolve very rapidly, and that we need to sort of keep our eye on.

The other thing to note is that the profile of people who immigrate from India to the US is also changing over time. Right in the past, it used to be a very certain demographic of people who are already privileged enough to be able to send their kids abroad.

And now, the population that's coming over is changing.

And the population that is deciding to stay in the US versus those who go back home is also changing.

So I think in 10 years, it remains to see what even happens to the demographic.

Right now we have this statistic where Indian Americans' median household income is one of the highest.

Actually, I think it's the highest amongst all ethnic groups in the US, and so also is the level of education.

And with that comes a set of policies that you people prefer. It remains to be seen to what extent that changes to begin with, and to what extent advocacy efforts change.

And those two together, I think will determine where this community goes in the next decade or two decades.

Could you share your takeaways in what impact would a Harris presidency have on Indian Americans and US-India relations? And how would a Trump presidency affect them?

When you ask people, to what extent they care about US-India relations as a topic guiding their vote, it's an issue that's close to the bottom.

They don't care about it as much they care about other sort of domestic issues.

I think that's really interesting, but it's not super surprising.

If you know research on American political behavior, foreign policy tends not to be a very salient factor in determining the way people vote.

We always assume that for Indian Americans, we have this attachment to India, and people are really going to cast their votes on the basis of that.

We're really not seeing that. In fact, the Indian American communities providing survey answers that are like every other American.

They're saying they care about inflation and prices. They're saying they care about abortion. A lot of them are saying they care about climate change.

But very few are saying that the way that a government deals with India is what's going to impact their role.

Now, obviously that's a function of everything else, because foreign policy is endogenous to everything else that an administration does, but from that perspective, it seems to not be a very salient issue.

How it will actually play out depending on who wins, I think it's something that somebody who studies diplomacy is probably more suited to answer compared to me.

Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff.com