Are Republicans and Indian Americans natural allies?

Is it in the interest of Indian-Americans to vote Republicans?

The most recent United States census put the Indian-American population at around 5 million. This is close to 1.7% of the total American population. By one account, there are an additional 2.7 million Indian immigrants living in the US. Indian-American voters are also “high propensity”, which means they have a high likelihood of voting. This is what Carnegie Endowment’s 2024 Indian American Attitude Survey¹ said

Indian Americans are what are called “high propensity” voters; data from the Indian American Attitudes Survey (IAAS) suggest that 96 percent of registered Indian American voters are likely to vote in this November’s elections.

Both parties try to woo the Indian-American electorate but most Indian-Americans are solidly Democrats. In this post, I try to make the case that Indian-Americans, particularly Hindu-Americans, should rethink their solid support for the Democratic Party.

Why do Indian-Americans support Democrats?

Let’s first explore why Democrats have garnered such strong support from the Indian community in the US.

1. From the 1960s, Republicans were increasingly seen as the party of Whites. In 1992, 93% of Republican voters were White compared to 76% of the Democrats.²

2. Republicans are the party for Christians and other evangelical denominations. A very large majority of Indian-Americans belong to non-Christian faiths. All native Indic faiths are non-proselytizing, which naturally fosters aversion to evangelical systems. As a result, Indians don’t really fit naturally into the Republican coalition. In fact, the strongest tilt towards Democrats comes because of this reason. A 2012 Pew survey showed that among Asian Hindus, 75% strongly favor Democrats.

3. Democrats were, rightly or wrongly, seen as the party favoring immigrants. The strong anti-immigrant rhetoric from Republicans was enough to alienate most Indians. Trump raised the heat around legal immigrants too during his 2016 presidency which was a major turnoff.

4. Since the 1990s, the urban-rural divide has become even more stark in American politics. Urban areas reliably vote for Democrats while rural areas reliably vote for Republicans. The Law & Political Economy project has a good explainer on the history of this process. Democrats have policies that works in favor of the urban population. With the Indian population clustering mostly around metro areas, this introduces another tilt towards Democrats.

5. A significant chunk of Indians (77%) self-identify as either socially moderate or liberal and only 23% identify themselves as conservative. This is again a very natural alignment towards Democrats.

6. Republicans, rightly or wrongly, are perceived as more racist than their Democrat counterparts. Racist incidents also pushed the community away from Republicans in general.

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Reevaluating the Indian-American support for Democrats

All the factors mentioned above came together to push Indian-Americans into the arms of Democrats. Over the decades, most of these reasons have been partially neutered. The proof of the pudding lies in the modest erosion of support that the Democrats saw. Asian Americans shifted rightward by about 5 points. I couldn’t find specific numbers for Indian-Americans, but a 2024 Carnegie Endowment survey on Indian-Americans’ political attitudes found that about a third intended to vote for Trump.

Additionally, in the 2024 elections, racial depolarization was observed. While Harris won a majority of votes from people of color, her margins were far lower than Biden’s in 2020. The Navajo nation had a 10-15 point swing towards Trump. Trump and Harris tied for Nevada’s Hispanic voters, a sharp shift from Biden’s 26 point victory in 2020. Many other examples can be found in exit polls. Instead, the main divide in this election was between college educated voters and non-college educated.

Trump seems to have had the Christian nationalist wing of the party under control. Abortion is a very sensitive issue among the Indian-American population, especially among Hindus with 70% saying that it should be legal. The Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and sent it back to the states. Each state now has the autonomy to establish its own abortion regulations. With that deft move, Trump moderated his position on abortion, placated his base and was able to sidestep the issue, hardly bringing it up on the campaign.

The Democrats claim to be more welcoming of immigrants, and while that holds true, their approach is more welcoming to illegal immigrants. Quoting directly from their immigration platform

Thanks to President Obama, hundreds of thousands of DREAMers have been able to receive a temporary status that allows them to study, work, pay taxes, and contribute to the communities they grew up in. His administration has made a tremendous difference by prioritizing immigration enforcement so that it is focused on those with criminal records and doesn’t arbitrarily separate families, and Democrats are fighting to protect that progress.

DREAMers are those who came to the US illegally as minors and grew up in America. This happens when parents migrate illegally when their children are very young. However, Indian-Americans have their own version of DREAMers. These are minor children whose parents came to America on a work visa. Indians face multi-decade wait for a Green Card in America. Once children turn 21, they can’t be dependents on their parents and are suddenly faced with deportation. There are about 300,000 such documented dreamers. And the Democrats are eerily silent about the whole thing. Most Indians are turned off by such attitudes. A Carnegie Endowment survey on Indian-American voters found that 27% of Indians who do not identify as Democrats, do so because of their attitude towards illegal immigration.

Racism is also on the decline in America. Traditional Republicans have been replaced in the party as described by Noah Smith in his explainer. Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy and other tech figures increasingly occupy the higher echelons of the Republican party. This reduces the hold of traditional Christians like Mike Pence and Jeff Flake in the Republican Party. Relatedly, parts of the Republican Party (not all) can be described as socially liberal and fiscally conservative. The GOP has accepted same-sex marriage, it has diluted its official stand on abortion and is accepting of trans-people as long as the person trying to transition is an adult. This makes it ideologically less hostile to non-whites and non-Christians that comprise the majority of the Indian-American population, becoming more attractive to those that identify as socially moderate or liberal.

The Democrat Party’s focus on affirmative action is detrimental to Indian Americans in particular and Asian Americans in general. Only 1 in 5 Asian Americans say that race or ethnicity should be considered in college admissions. Affirmative action contributed to racial discrimination against Asians in college applications. Additionally, Asians are now considered to be “white-adjacent”. White-adjacency is a term coined by Critical Race Theory (CRT) meaning a group that isn’t technically white, but is considered to benefit from structures of white privilege. CRT posits that American society is divided into privileged and oppressed groups, with systemic issues often attributed to this dynamic. CRT further suggests that Asians are complicit in upholding white supremacy due to their so-called 'white adjacency,' which can make it easier to justify discrimination against them, such as in college admissions.

So why should Indian Americans ally with Republicans?

In my view, it is politically expedient for Indian-Americans to ally with the Republican Party. Certain characteristics of the community make the Republican Party a natural home.

With Indian-Americans climbing the social and economic ladder relatively quickly, they’ve become targets for attacks from academia and the media. Audrey Truschke is particularly vicious with such attacks. Places of worship aren’t spared either. The BAPS temple in New Jersey was accused of using forced labor to build the temple. They were later exonerated and the case was found baseless. Without exception, all of these people find a home — and a voice — in the Democratic Party. In contrast, Republicans have been more accepting of Indians without paying attention to their socioeconomic backgrounds³.

Indian-Americans are the highest earning ethnicity in the US. Median household income is $152,341. This is slightly more than double that of Whites who have a median household income of $74,932. Progressives often allege that pervasive systemic racism exists which contributes to people of color being subject to socio-economic oppression. With Indian-Americans being wildly successful, this puts that theory to test. To counter this fact, the pandora’s box of caste is opened and used to attack Indians. Such coalition compulsions do not exist in the Republican Party and Indian Americans could find a natural home in that tent.

A 2021 survey found that about half of Indian-Americans feel strongly attached to India⁴. The feeling is even stronger among those that identify with native Indic faiths. In recent times, the Democratic establishment has been hostile to India. Eric Garcetti, US Ambassador to India, has time and again downplayed Khalistani extremism and made inappropriate comments on free speech. Donald Blome, US Ambassador to Pakistan, had secretly visited PoK (Pakistan Occupied Kashmir) twice, which goes against international norms. House Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota), has introduced resolutions hostile to India in the House of Representatives. Progressives have also attacked Hindus and Hinduism a lot in recent times. They have attacked Tulsi Gabbard, a Hindu, as a member of an obscure religious cult. Hindu advocacy organizations have been —wrongly— subject to misinformation. There are other instances that I detail as part of an earlier post.

In contrast, Republicans have been more friendly towards India and to Hindu interests. Donald Trump condemned the attacks on Hindus in Bangladesh in a Diwali tweet. Kamala’s silence on the matter was conspicuous. Tulsi Gabbard, an ex-Democrat identifying with the Hindu faith, was recently appointed as Director of National Intelligence by Donald Trump. She is forthright in calling for protection of Hindu minorities in Bangladesh. Marco Rubio was nominated by Trump to serve as Secretary of State. He has been hawkish toward Pakistan and China and very receptive to Indian interests.

So what’s the catch?

While the Republican Party itself is more accepting of Indian and Hindu interests, there are two highly antagonistic factions in the party.

1. It cannot be denied that there are Christian nationalist elements in the Republican Party. While they are not racists, they are aggressively proselytizing. Vivek Ramaswamy serves as a compelling example for examining the depth of the GOP's Christian roots.

   1. Recently, while campaigning for Donald Trump, Vivek Ramaswamy was taking questions. A member of the audience came up to the mic and called Ramaswamy’s Hindu faith as wicked and pagan.

   2. He has to demonstrate similarities between Hinduism and Christianity to win over Iowa’s evangelicals.

   3. When he was running for the Presidential nomination, he was asked how could a Hindu be accepted as President in the US.

   4. He has to boil down Hinduism to a monotheistic version of the faith in order to appeal to potential Christian voters.

   5. And it must also be remembered that Nikki Haley and Bobby Jindal, both of Indian origin, had to convert to Christianity in order to rise in the ranks of the Republican Party. That Vivek Ramaswamy didn’t have to convert to rise to the topmost echelons, is a promising sign of the direction that Republicans are headed in, but we’ll have to wait and watch for a couple more election cycles before coming to a conclusion.

2. Second, there are White supremacist-nationalist elements in the GOP. There are many instances only a Google search away so I won’t bother linking them here. However, there’s an interesting conversation between Vivek Ramaswamy and Ann Coulter on the topic. Ann Coulter says that she couldn’t accept Vivek⁵ as the President because in her view, POTUS should be WASPy (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) and not Indian.

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This makes the choice between Democrats and Republicans feel like being caught between a rock and a hard place. In my opinion, the Republican Party feels the lesser of the two evils because the threats are much more explicit on the surface. The Democratic Party has much more insidious elements that work their agenda under the surface. With racism declining in America, this trend could weaken the influence of white supremacy, making Republicans seem like a safer choice.

1. The survey is quite interesting. I strongly recommend reading through the whole thing here. Among other things, the survey found that a third of Indian-Americans intended to vote for Trump.

2. I took this from a Pew Research Center report on the changing composition of political parties.

3. As I elaborate later though, Republicans aren’t as accepting of non-Christian faiths.

4. This observation comes from the 2021 Carnegies Survey on Indian-Americans attitudes. I linked the 2024 version of the survey earlier. An interesting tidbit that I found was the following

It is worth noting that Indian Americans who belong to religious minorities also report feeling less connected to India than Hindu Indian Americans. Twenty-eight percent of non-Hindus report feeling either not too connected or not at all connected to India, compared to 18 percent of Hindu Indian Americans.

5. If you have time, I highly recommend watching Vivek’s reply. It is a masterclass in understanding the crux of your opponent’s argument and constructing the correct points to refute it.