Trump’s tariffs on India may be partly explained by who funds his politics. Our study of two decades of Indian American lobbying in the US shows a strong, consistent Democrat lean, with Trump-1 scoring among the lowest ever share from Indian Americans (1/n)
Despite claims that the “NRI Uncles” have been rooting for Trump en masse since they support the political right in India, we find relatively less support among Indian Americans for Republicans in the US. There are 6 Indian Americans in US Congress - all are Democrats.
Using 22 years of FEC data (2000-2022) we examine donation among Indian-Americans (1.5% of U.S. pop.). Indian-American contributors rose from ~6700 in 2000 to ~43000 in 2020. Up 550%. In 2000 about ~0.6% Indian-Amercians donated to politics, in 2022 ~1.3%. But still miniscule!
Contributions are concentrated in states with a high Indian American pop. 5 states—CA, TX, NJ, NY, IL—account for over 50% of Indian-American donors. CA alone contributed $34.8M in 2020. Texan Indian-Americans, on average, fund politics a lot less than Californians
Healthcare professionals are the largest group of donors (40%), and the top category of donors across an overwhelming majority of US states. However, finance professionals give the most money in dollar terms.
When we look at the dollar value of contributors by state, we see that Indian Americans in finance are very prominent in the east coast and out of Chicago, and venture capitalist are big funders in California. Tech donors are bigger in the Midwest and Washington.
Mega donors are hugely influential. Indian-Americans lack these. A consistent top donor, venture capitalist Vinod Khosla typically gives less than a 20th of mega donors like GOP’s Timothy Mellon or Miriam Adelson (and now Elon Musk).
But Indian-American “bundlers” are very important in the campaign structure. People like Ramesh Kapur, Shefali Razdan Duggal, Ajay Bhutoria etc bring in funding through events, connections etc and are often rewarded with posts if their side wins.
In 2020, they gave $46.6M to Democrats vs. $16.3M to Republicans. This trend is consistent across nearly all states and sectors. Even when Indians work in heavily Republican sectors like Construction, they still lean Democrat.
Among big Indian-American donors, there is a slightly higher skew towards Republicans compared to among the small donors but overall trend is solidly Democrat. Indian Americans overwhelmingly supported Democrats against Trump in 2020
In fact, Trump has plenty of reason to hold a grudge with Indian Americans. During his first run, Indian Americans massively supported Hillary over him, and again leaned much more Biden in 2020.
Partisan tilt: Overwhelmingly Democrat. In 2020, $46.6M went to Dems vs $16.3M to GOP. Every industry (even agribusiness) leans blue among Indian donors.
DS Saund, the first Indian-American in Congress in the 1950s, he underplayed his Indian identity. Bobby Jindal, the next, highlighted his Christian identity. By now, the 6-member Indian-American crew openly embraces the “Samosa Caucus” name.
Indian-origin candidates draw the deepest diaspora support: Suraj Patel (raised $5.5M, mostly from Patels), Ro Khanna (80% of early funds early from Indians). Others incl Tulsi Gabbard (Hindu, not Indian) and Bobby Jindal have received large support in the past.
The Indian-American community acts as a launchpad. While early support is Indian-American; once elected, reliance falls as candidates tap broader coalitions. Eg. Ro Khanna, from an Indian-heavy district started with Indian-American support and now is broader.
Indian-Americans aren’t kingmakers yet, but organized, wealthy, and visible. The full paper names the major funders in key states. We have also created a visualization with the text profiles of all the key donors, their sectors, states etc.
More details on our methodology is available in the full paper. This work is done by @kkkarnav @aymanidk Please support the work of @OpenSecretsDC whose data we use here! Access the full paper here:
Method: We built a hybrid name-classification model (using datasets, n-grams, neural nets + manual checks) to identify Indian-origin donors in FEC/OpenSecrets. Details and error estimation in the full paper.
The data on Indian Americans is from the incredible work of @AAPIData