The presidential election is going to be held in the United States on November 5. Republican candidate Donald Trump and Democratic candidate Kamala Harris are fighting. But both of them need the support of Indian voters to win this fight. So both are now looking at Indian diaspora.
Diaspora Indians have been actively participating in US elections for several years. About 5.2 million American citizens of Indian origin live there, which is about 1.5 percent of the total American population. More than 26 lakh of them are eligible to vote this time. Diaspora Indians are now the most successful group in America who were a largely irrelevant community a century ago. They are the second largest community in the Americas after Mexicans. According to statistics, the average family income of expatriate Indians is about 1 lakh 53 thousand US dollars.
Currently Indian origin are in the CEO positions of US corporate companies Novartis, Starbucks, Vertex, as well as the CEO positions of Microsoft, Adobe, Google, IBM in the IT sector. Apart from this, Nobel laureates Hargobind Khorana and Subramanian Chandrasekhar in science, Amartya Sen and Abhijit Banerjee in economics, Jhumpa Lahiri and Vikram Seth in literature, Ali Velshi and Farid Zakaria in journalism, Nora Jones and Zubin Mehta in music, and Mindy Kaling, Aziz Ansari, Hasan Minhaj in comedy shows are enough. In respectable American society.
Indians currently own about 50 percent of all motels and 20 percent of all trucks in America. Indians currently hold 4.4 percent of senior government posts.
Americans of Indian origin are also ahead in the political field. Kamala Harris's mother Shyamala Gopalan is an Indian. Five members of the US Congress Ami Bera, Pramila Jaipal, Ro Khanna, Raja Krishnamurthy and Sri Thanadar have Indian blood. States like California, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, known as vote banks for Democrats, have more than 50 percent Indian American voters. And in hotly contested swing states like Georgia, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, nearly one-third of Indian American voters live.
Statistics show that in the last election, the Indian community had the highest voter turnout of 71 percent compared to all other races living in America. According to a survey released in September, 96 percent of Indian-American voters plan to vote in this election.
Indian-Americans have the potential to influence the outcome of this 2024 election. They can affect the margin of victory in states' elections. More than half of them (55 percent) lean toward Democrats. On the other hand, 26 percent of Indian-Americans are Republican supporters. It is said that the top 5 reasons why Republican supporters are low among Indians are abortion issues, perceived intolerance of minorities, loyalty to Christian evangelicalism, economic policies and gun laws.
However, both parties are trying to win Indian American votes. And because of that, in 2023 New York Governor Cathy Hochul signed a law declaring Diwali a public holiday for all schools in the city. State Senator Jeremy Cooney recently introduced a new bill to declare Diwali a public holiday for all schools across the state. Democrat Governor Josh Shapiro officially signed legislation to declare Diwali a public holiday in Pennsylvania this year. Trump proposed 'automatic' green cards for foreign students after graduating from a US college. It greatly affects the Indian population. Recently he has been very vocal in his praise of India, Prime Minister Modi and Hindus. He supported the proposal to build a Hindu Genocide Memorial in Washington DC.
However, it is very difficult to predict who will win in the end. Whoever wins the US presidency, the influence of Indian voters on the American political landscape as a whole is certainly increasing and it will be difficult for both parties to ignore Indian voters in the coming years.
