TOI Correspondent From Washington: Donald Trump made an unlikely political breakthrough in 2024, prising away a slice of Indian-American voters from a community that had reliably backed Democrats for decades. Two years later, the romance appears to have soured.A new survey by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace finds that the Republican gains have largely evaporated, with Indian-Americans swinging back towards Democrats ahead of the November 2026 midterms. According to the Indian American Attitudes Survey conducted in October, 62 per cent of Ind-Am citizens intend to vote Democratic in their congressional district, against just 19 per cent backing Republicans, whittled down from nearly 30 per cent who voted for Trump in 2024. Another 12 per cent are undecided. Senate voting intentions show a similar pattern: 63 per cent favour Democrats and 21 per cent Republicans.The nationally representative survey of 1,000 Indian-American adults, conducted with YouGov between October 7 and 27, has a margin of error of 3.87 percent.The reversal is striking: In 2020, 68 per cent intended to vote for Joe Biden against 22 per cent for Trump. In 2024, Kamala Harris retained 62 per cent support, but Trump improved his showing to 30 per cent. Democratic support subsequently slipped to 57 per cent in January 2026 before recovering to 62 per cent, still short of the years they leaned heavily Democratic but a distinct uptick.The community’s return to traditional Democratic preference appears to reflect its immigrant and minority experience, support for legal immigration and social welfare, and discomfort with the MAGA Republican Party’s association with Christian evangelicalism and perceived intolerance of minorities.Previously, their economic success, entrepreneurship, lower-tax preferences and concerns about illegal immigration made some desis receptive to Republican arguments. Trump’s cultivation of PM Modi, including their high-profile Howdy Modi rally in Houston in 2019, also improved his standing.The subsequent Trump second term presidency, however, has exposed the limits of that appeal. Immigration crackdown, including efforts to restrict birthright citizenship and the hex on H1B visas and workplace raids have struck particularly close to home in a community with extensive family and professional connections to India. Carnegie found that two-thirds opposed the new H-1B fee and 74 per cent opposed deporting immigrants to third countries.Racial hostility has compounded the alienation, with the September controversy involving Bo French, the Republican nominee for the Texas Railroad Commission, a grating example. After the University of Texas football team defeated Ohio State, French posted a photograph of brown students celebrating in the stands, suggesting their presence illustrated how Americans had been displaced by foreigners. The implication that students who looked Indian were somehow not American provoked outrage, inviting criticism from moderate Republicans like Senator John Cornyn, who has been sidelined by Trump, who has made little effort to contain the rampant racism of his nativist MAGA flock.Yet the Democratic resurgence is not necessarily an ideological conversion, with 35 per cent of those intending to vote Democratic say opposition to Republicans, rather than enthusiasm for Dems, is their primary motivation. Meanwhile, 26 per cent identify as independents, underscoring the community’s political fluidity.With more than 5.2 million people of Indian origin, roughly 1.5 per cent of the US population, Indian-Americans cannot determine a national election by themselves. But their concentration in California, New Jersey, Texas, Georgia, Michigan, Illinois and the Washington metropolitan area gives them influence in closely contested races.The message for Republicans clearly is that economic conservatism and affinity with Modi cannot indefinitely outweigh anxieties about immigration and belonging. For Democrats, the lesson is not to take the community’s support for granted. The 2024 Republican breakthrough showed that Indian-American voters are persuadable. The 2026 survey suggests they are now heading back to the Dem fortress.
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