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The U.S. election win of Zohran Mamdani and other Indian-American candidates may mark a return of votes from some of the diaspora, especially young men, who had shifted their support to U.S. President Donald Trump and the Republican Party in 2024, says Milan Vaishnav. Dr. Vaishnav — the Director of the South Asia Programme at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace — has surveyed Indian-American attitudes through a number of recent U.S. elections and published papers on the subject, and says the shift may also be a backlash to anti-immigrant campaigns by Republican/Make America Great Again (MAGA) supporters.
What does the “Mamdani moment” mean for the Indian diaspora? Just a year ago he polled just about 1% among voters, and now he is the first Indian-American Mayor of New York?
Yes, you’re right. A year ago, he was polling at 1% and only very hard core political observers would have heard his name, and if they had, it was because of his famous parents, the Film Director Mira Nair and the academic Mahmood Mamdani. And to think he was up again some of the most veteran politicians of the city and the state and won in such incredible style. So what does it mean for the Indian-American community? Indian-American politicians are not necessarily wedded to their core ethnic base of Indians and South Asian communities here, but Zohran Mamdani resonated with them. What’s so impressive is that he really built a cross-class, cross-race, cross-ethnicity coalition that was very unique.
This is also a reminder to people in India and not least the Indian government, that the Indian American diaspora is very diverse. Many of us have had these kind of stereotypes in our mind of what the diaspora looks like. But in fact, as the generations go by, both politically as well as in terms of their policy, in terms of their demeanour, in terms of their affect… there’s a whole range and cannot be taken for granted, and with all the political changes in the U.S., that’s really come to the fore now.
Mr. Mamdani was one of three Democratic party candidates from the diaspora, including Ghazala Hashmi, who won Lieutenant Governor in Virginia and Aftab Pureval, re-elected Cincinnati Mayor. What do their wins mean for Indian-Americans, who are concerned about the prevailing anti-immigrant MAGA (Republican) sentiment?
I think there’s two common threads across these three candidates you mentioned. Number one is, they all wore their identity as a badge of honour. They were not shrinking away from their identity, their culture, their religion. So I think that’s important at a time when, as you rightly pointed out, the Indian American community does feel under some sense of unease, of threat, even if you go by kind of language we’re seeing online, certainly amongst the MAGA supporters. The second is, they all focused on really core bread and butter issues. They talked about affordability. They talked about the healthcare crisis. They talk about the cost of higher education, of childcare, daycare. These are the bread and butter issues that I think a lot of Americans, in poll after poll after poll tells us they care about. And I think that there’s a warning there as well for the Republican Party, particularly that identity based attacks may not work with their voter.
Where are Indian Americans polling now – Democrat or Republican?
It’s an important question. We did a nationwide survey of Indian Americans in 2020 which was the first of its kind. And what we found was consistent with other studies of broadly Asian Americans, that Indian Americans supported the Democrats vis a vis the Republicans, about 70-20. In 2024, the 70-20 went to 60-30, a significant compression of the difference. Obviously, almost two out of three Americans are voting for Democrats. But it sent a message that Indian-American votes cannot be taken for granted by them.
Now, when you dig in and you look at the kind of people that were voting for Mr. Trump, who may have voted for former U.S. President Joe Biden, almost the entirety of that shift in four years was young Indian-American men under the age of 40. Women didn’t change, and older men didn’t change. It was really young men. Preliminary data suggests that in this New York Mayor election, a lot of Indian-American men switched to Mr. Mamdani, which tells you that some of the vote for Mr. Trump may not have been deeply ideological, but they felt Mr. Trump was offering what the country needed at that particular moment.
Mr. Mamdani has been very critical of the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Do you see these results changing how the Indian government would engage with the diaspora?
First and foremost, when people are voting, even in a presidential election, but certainly in a local election, they are really focused on local issues. So I think the U.S.-India relationship, Mr. Mamdani’s views on Mr. Modi, what he might have said, is a rather marginal factor in these elections. But I think the second more longer term perspective is that I do think that the government of India and its interlocutors have to invest in building relationships with a wide variety of people. They put a lot of eggs in the MAGA/Republican Party basket. And look at the backlash that Indian-Americans are facing [from the U.S, ruling party]. And so I’m hoping that this election also going to prompt some greater reflection in terms of realising that the Indian-American diaspora is not monolithic. As the generations pass, it’s going to change even further, certainly, and India needs to think about how to broad base understanding of the [Indian-American] community.
