Indian-Americans remain strongly attached to the Democratic Party, with little sign of a shift to the Republican Party, a latest US community poll said Wednesday. Up to 72 percent of registered Indian-American voters plan to vote for Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, while 22 percent intend to vote for incumbent Republican Donald Trump, three percent will support a candidate of a third party and three percent. percent do not intend to vote at all, according to the poll.
Contrary to the emerging narrative, Americans of Indian descent remain committed to the Democratic Party. Nearly three-quarters of registered Indian-American voters intend to support Joe Biden this fall, compared to just 22 percent for Donald Trump, he said. According to the report, kitchen table issues dominate foreign policy concerns, Kamala Harris has mobilized Indian-Americans, especially Democrats, and political beliefs seep into perceptions of bilateral US relations. and India, he said.
The report ‘How will Native Americans vote? Results of the 2020 American Indian Attitudes Survey ‘, is based on the American Indian Attitudes Survey (IAAS), a collaboration between the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Johns Hopkins-SAIS, and the University of Pennsylvania. IAAS is a nationally representative online survey of 936 Indian-American citizens conducted between September 1 and September 20, 2020, in association with YouGov, according to a press release.
It has an overall margin of error of +/- 3.2 percent. An emerging narrative is taking shape suggesting that the bonhomia enjoyed by Trump and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, compounded by concerns about how a Biden administration might handle ties between the United States and India, is pressuring Indian-American voters to leave the Democratic Party, according to the report. He said.
The results of a new survey find no empirical evidence to support any of these claims, he said. Despite talk of how America’s ties to India might influence voting behavior between Native Americans and Americans in these elections, U.S.-India relations rank second to last on the U.S. priority list. voters. Instead, the economy and healthcare are the two biggest issues influencing voters in this election, the poll said.
The candidacy of Harris, the Democratic Party’s vice presidential candidate, has prompted a sizeable portion of the Indian-American community to turn out to vote. While Harris’s election might not change a large number of votes, his candidacy has sparked more excitement for the Democratic ballot, he said. Additionally, Indian-Americans believe that Democrats do a better job of managing US-Indian ties by a considerable margin, while Republicans have more favorable views of Modi, the report said.
Noting that Indian Americans are exhibiting signs of significant political polarization, the survey report says that American-born Indian Americans are leaning to the left compared to foreign-born citizens. Indian Americans refrain from identifying with the Republican Party due, in part, to the perception that the party is intolerant of minorities and overly influenced by Christian evangelicalism. Those who identify as Republicans are primarily motivated to do so because of economic policy differences with Democrats, with particularly stark differences regarding health care, he said.
Between 2000 and 2018, the Indian-American population grew by nearly 150 percent, making it the second-largest immigrant group in the United States today. The community’s high levels of educational attainment and family income make its members valuable campaign contributors and potential mobilizers, he said. And in certain swing states, the Indian-American population is greater than the margin of victory that separated Hillary Clinton and Trump in the tight 2016 presidential race, the report noted.
According to the report, 56 percent of Indian-Americans consider themselves Democrats, 15 percent Republicans, and 22 percent Independent. While 29 percent of Indian-Americans classify themselves as moderate, a higher proportion of the remaining respondents are on the ideological left: 11 percent identify as extremely liberal, 23 percent as liberal. and 13 percent as slightly liberal.
The proportion of respondents at the far right of the ideological spectrum is much lower: 4 percent identify as extremely conservative, 13 percent as conservative and an additional 6 percent as slightly conservative, he said. According to the report, a big conclusion from the poll is that there is little evidence in the poll of widespread defection of Democratic voters to Trump, contrary to popular narratives that have emerged in the media ahead of the Nov. 3 presidential election. Identifying themselves as Democrats, 89 percent plan to vote for Biden, while a slightly smaller proportion (80 percent) of Republicans plan to back Trump in November. The poll suggests that 64 percent of respondents who identify as independents (roughly one-eighth of all American Indian voters) will back Biden, while 22 percent intend to vote for Trump, similar to preferences. general community policies in general, he said.
Furthermore, there is little evidence of a significant evolution in party loyalties since 2016, he said. The vast majority (91 percent) of Indian-Americans, who voted for Clinton in 2016, plan to support Biden. A smaller percentage of Indian Americans, who voted for Trump in 2016 (68 percent), plan to back him.
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