How Indian-Americans could determine the presidency.
Indian-Americans are becoming an ever-growing demographic in the Atlanta Metro area, and are the voters who can decide Georgia.
Election after election, political pundits look at Georgia the same way. White voters are going to be heavily Republican. Black voters are going to be heavily Democratic. And the battle between these two demographics are going to determine the fate of elections in Georgia.
However, much has changed in the last twenty years. While whites are still a majority of the vote in Georgia, they only comprise of 61% according to the CNN exit poll back in 2022 in the US Senate race. This is a 10% decrease from 2004, when George W. Bush walked away with the state.
But those numbers haven’t necessarily been offset by black voters. While only 24% in 2004, they were only 29% in the recent US Senate race in 2022. Only a about half of the loss in the white vote can be attributed to an increase in black population.
One of the groups that have had a spike in influence when it comes to the electoral fortunes in Georgia are Indian-American voters. Once just a small group, they now constitute significant voting blocks in the Atlanta suburbs. In Gwinnett County, Asian-Americans (an overwhelming majority whose heritage hail from the Indian subcontinent) accounted for 13.3% of the population, according to the 2020 US Census. In Forsyth County, once known as a hotbed of white supremacy, Asian-American are 18% of the population, growing from less than 1% just 20 years earlier. Today, South Asians number about 170,000 according the the latest US Census estimates.
In previous elections, the Asian-American population had been too small to poll, even in large sample size exit polls. But in the 2022 US Senate race in Georgia, there was a statistically significant number of Asian-Americans questioned when leaving the polls, indicating that Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock won 59% of vote of Asian-Americans. This gives us our first possible glimpse into the impact of South Asian-Americans in Georgia (as the numbers do include all Asian-Americans).
Of course, putting the finger on the pulse of the South Asian vote in any state has been quite tricky. Some of them are extremely liberal, while others are extremely conservative. But it does seem, at least in the State of Georgia, they they are trending Democratic.
If these numbers are replicated nationwide, then South Asians can help tilt the scales in some key states. In Texas, there are nearly 500,000 South Asians, primarily in Houston, the Dallas Metroplex and in Austin. In Michigan, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina, the South Asian population numbers 1.2%. In an election that could be determined by a few thousand, if not hundreds, of votes, South Asians essentially have the balance of power in these key battleground states.
Then there is the factor of Kamala Harris being the first Indian-American candidate to be nominated by a major political party for president. Of course, her being the nominee might not change anything, as other prominent Indian-Americans have run on the Republican side, like Vivek Ramaswamy and Nikki Haley. Still, being the nominee might change everything. Or change nothing.
With the exception of Asian-American polling numbers from Georgia, which includes all Asians, which makes the waters murkier, we really don’t know where this key electorate will fall. Wherever they do fall, however, might determine the next president.
A good point but Trump has also had some Indian connections, with Modi seemingly being fairly close to him. And of course JD Vance's wife is Indian. But Laura Loomer, Trump's soon to be press secretary, has let us know how undesirable it will be for the White House to smell of curry.
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/who-is-laura-loomer-trumps-far-right-provocateur-behind-racist-curry-smell-comment-on-kamala/amp_articleshow/113302872.cms