A liberal lot us election puts a spotlight on indian americans it’s not just about kamala

A liberal lot us election puts a spotlight on indian americans it’s not just about kamala

The candidature of Kamala Harris has put a historic spotlight on Indian-Americans in the US. This is not a large vote bank, at around 1% of the country’s population. But the nature of the 2020 contest has made it worth wooing hard, by both Democrats and Republicans. As Joe Biden wrote in an oped, it can make “all the difference from North Carolina and Virginia to Pennsylvania and Michigan to Georgia and Texas”. In other words, it can give a critical nudge in the swing states. To illustrate, there are 61,000 Indian-American voters in Pennsylvania, a state which Donald Trump won by less than 45,000 votes last time, and which is close to being a must-win for him this time.

Overall these voters tilt blue, with the Indian American Attitudes Survey finding that 72% of them plan to vote for Biden and 22% for Trump. The combination of being brown and very well-educated is predictive of this tilt, with 47% of Indian-American citizens classifying themselves on the liberal spectrum as compared to 23% on the conservative one. From press freedoms to the Black Lives Matter movement, liberal attitudes dominate especially among those born in America.

For long the model minority tag of the community also signified that they didn’t adventure beyond professions like engineering, medicine or academics. But over time they have become far likelier to get involved in politics as compared to other Asian groups. Many of them now staff Capitol Hill and this election may also see the Samosa Caucus, collective nickname for Indian-American lawmakers in Congress, grow larger. If Harris does indeed become the first woman vice-president of the US, that would give strong new momentum to the diaspora’s political ambitions up and down the tickets. But the trend is already here.