P O L I T I C S
55
30
BloombergBusinessweek November 2, 2020Edited by
Amanda Kolson Hurley● Indian-Americanslean
stronglyDemocratic,butTrump
is makinginroads—thanksto
NarendraModiModiandbyTrump.(OtherIndian-Americans
protested outside.)
Last year, Modi’s government revoked the auton-
omy of the contested region of Kashmir, which is
predominantly Muslim, and changed a citizenship
law to favor members of religious minorities from
Muslim-majority neighboring countries. These
moves sparked deadly protests at home and crit-
icism from abroad that India, which is about 80%
Hindu, was discriminating against its 200 million
Muslims. Asked about the citizenship law on a state
visit to India in February, Trump said it was “up
to India.”
The Trump-Modi relationship is one reason
some Indian-Americans, especially men who
are middle-aged or older and foreign-born, have
boarded the Trump train—men such as Dinesh
Agrawal, a materials researcher at Penn State who
voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016. “Over the last four
years, I’ve seen Trump have the strongest and most
favorable relationship with India since India’s inde-
pendence,” he says.
Younger and U.S.-born Indian-Americans are
more likely to focus on domestic issues. The dynam-
ics are complicated by Democratic challenger Joe
Biden’s selection of Senator Kamala Harris, who’s
Black and Indian-American, as his running mate.
“Indian-Americans are as divided as Indians
are” over politics, says Shekar Narasimhan, chair-
man and founder of the AAPI Victory Fund, a
Democratic super PAC.
There are large Indian-American communities
in the key swing states of Florida, Michigan, and
Pennsylvania—large enough to make a difference
if the results are close. Both parties are trying to
reach them before Nov. 3 with targeted ads.Although they represent only slightly more than
1% of the U.S. population, Indian-Americans are the
second-largest immigrant community and one of
the fastest-growing racial or ethnic groups in the
nation. Not long ago this group could be assumed
to be reliably Democratic: In 2008, 93% of Indian-
Americans cast ballots for Barack Obama, on par
with the voting pattern of Black Americans, accord-
ing to the National Asian American Survey.
Eight years later, Donald Trump performed bet-
ter with the community, and recent data suggest a
further tilt to the right in 2020. The research firm
AAPI Data found that 28% of Indian-Americans
may vote for Trump, up from 16% four years ago.
A recent survey by YouGov with the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace, Johns Hopkins
University, and the University of Pennsylvania puts
Trump’s support among this group at 22%.
The shift has a lot to do with Indian Prime
Minister Narendra Modi, his Bharatiya Janata Party
(BJP), and its polarizing, hard-line brand of Hindu
nationalism, or Hindutva. Modi enjoys strong sup-
port for Hindutva and for his efforts to acceler-
ate development and crack down on terrorism.
President Trump has been a close ally of Modi’s. At
a nonpartisan rally called “Howdy, Modi!” held in
Houston in September 2019, about 50,000 people
of Indian origin listened to speeches by the visiting