Anger against Trump policies, not US stance towards India guided Indian-American voters: Expert

Washington: Indian Americans voted against the Republicans largely due to anger against the policies pursued by the Trump administration and not on the issue of foreign policy or the US attitude towards India, said Sumitra Badrinathan, who closely studies voting patterns in the US.

In an interview with PTI, Badrinathan said despite the challenging environment due to President Donald Trump's immigration policies, Indian Americans still find the US better suited for pursuing studies and careers than European countries.

“We've consistently asked Indian Americans whether they care about their politicians’ stance towards India, and the answer always seems to be a 'no',” said Badrinathan, assistant professor of Political Sciences at American University.

Badrinathan, along with Milan Vaishnav, Director of the South Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and others, released the Indian American Attitudes Survey aimed at understanding how the Indian diaspora approaches electoral politics in the US.

In the recently concluded midterm elections, six Indian American candidates were elected to the US House of Representatives, while over 30 won seats in state legislatures and other public offices.

Republican Vivek Ramaswamy lost a bitterly contested election for the post of Governor of Ohio, his home state and that of Vice President J D Vance.

Republicans lost control of the US Congress to Democrats, turning Trump into a lame duck president in the final two years of his tenure.

Trump acknowledged that his party lost the elections due to anger among the people facing high inflation caused by the Iran war.

However, Badrinathan argued that blaming just inflation and high oil prices for the Republican loss would be oversimplistic.

“We found that the issues that motivate Indian Americans are actually the same issues that motivate general Americans. They talk about jobs, the economy, cost of living. It's possible that this time, H-1B, discrimination, and those sorts of issues played a slightly larger role,” she said.

Anti-India sentiment dominated the election campaign in Texas, the state with the second-highest Indian-American population in the US, and remarks by Republican leader Bo French targeting University of Texas students triggered widespread outrage cutting across party lines.

“It's hard to say if the Bo French tweet alone pushed people to vote a certain way, as opposed to what came with it: changes around actual immigration policies, the rhetoric around it, and changes in the economy making people's lives harder. So, yes, it probably played a part,” Badrinathan said.

She said Indian Americans on average tend to have a pretty negative view of specific Trump policies around immigration, tariffs and H-1B visas.

Badrinathan refused to hazard a guess on the policies Democrats are likely to pursue towards India now that they have control of both the US House and the Senate.

“It's a new dawn. It's really hard to say whether the majority that the Democrats now hold in the House and Senate as well as multiple state legislatures is going to translate to policy or whether it's going to lead to gridlock,” she said.

“It's also hard to say whether the discourse is going to change because establishment Democrats have now seemingly taken a little bit of a backseat to let in some space for newcomers across states,” she said, referring to the number of Democratic Socialists of America candidates emerging victorious in the midterm elections.

Badrinathan said despite the tough immigration policies and discrimination against Indians, the interest in studying in the US continues to remain high.

“But it seems like even despite the perception that there is discrimination and one in two people saying they do experience some form of discrimination, mostly on the basis of skin colour, exit from the US is not happening. People are still encouraged to come to the US to both work and to study,” Badrinathan said.

(This story is published as part of the auto-generated syndicate wire feed. No editing has been done in the headline or the body by ABP Live.)