Policy Red Flags for Indian American Voters

A survey by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace asked Indian American citizens about their voting intentions for the upcoming U.S. presidential elections. While a majority of Indian Americans continue to favor the Democratic Party over the Republican Party, there has been an uptick in support towards Trump since the last U.S. presidential cycle in 2020.

The survey found that the most important issues for voters were inflation/prices (selected by 17 percent of respondents), abortion (13 percent), jobs/economy (13 percent) and immigration (10 percent). According to Carnegie, Republican respondents are more likely to be concerned by the state of the economy, while a higher share of Democrats are driven by the stance on abortion. Republican respondents were also more concerned by foreign policy, with a greater share naming U.S.-India relations (9 percent) and national security (5 percent) as their most-important issue.

The following chart shows the most commonly cited reasons among survey respondents for not supporting either the Democratic Party or the Republican Party. For example, in the latter case, nearly one in five respondents highlighted how they thought the Republican Party is intolerant of minorities and 16 percent said that they thought the party is too influenced by Christian evangelicalism. Meanwhile, 27 percent of respondents said they were deterred from voting for the Democratic Party because they thought the party was weak on illegal immigration. Other options that put off voters included the view that the Democratic Party is influenced by the extreme left (17 percent).