New Delhi: The mid-term elections in the United States dealt a major blow to President Donald Trump. Election trends show Asian Americans rejected Republicans, who had made gains with Trump 2.0 in the 2024 elections.
Asian Americans have since moved toward the Democrats. But the warning signs were always there. Several conservative Asian American leaders had warned this could happen, reported the HuffPost.
In the past two years, as anti-Indian rhetoric and hostility toward immigrants rose and contributed to a political backlash against Republicans, Asian American voters began preferring the blue side.
Trump’s hostile rhetoric toward Indian immigrants, particularly H-1B visa holders, backfired electorally.
The anti-Indian sentiment within conservative circles strained the Republican Party’s relationship with a growing and politically significant Asian American electorate.
Conservative influencers criticised immigrant workers and accused them of taking jobs away from American citizens.
In Texas, this sentiment escalated into explicitly anti-Indian comments by Republican candidate Bo French, who targeted the success of Indian Americans in education and business.
In the midterm elections, Vivek Ramaswamy, a Republican candidate, lost the race for Ohio governor to Democrat Amy Acton.
“I have serious concerns about the future direction of our country. The United States … is the only country built on a set of ideals that brought together a divided group of people … I believe those ideals still exist. I believe, as our founders did, that all people are created equal,” Ramaswamy said during the election speech.
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Shift among Asian Americans
An analysis by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace found that Republicans had roughly halved their support among the Indian American community compared with 2024, when roughly one-in-three said they would support the Grand Old Party.
“That one in three has now disappeared and gone back to what it was before,” Sumitra Badrinathan, an American University professor, told HuffPost. She conducted the study and analysed the shift.
She found that discrimination was not the only issue on the table. The community had concerns such as rising gas and grocery costs.
The major blow is Bo French’s anti-immigration rhetoric toward Indian Americans. He criticised the right of H-1B skilled worker visas.
Badrinathan’s analysis found that in 2024, 62 per cent of Indian Americans supported Kamala Harris while 30 per cent favoured Trump. By January 2026, Democratic support had slipped to 57 per cent, with 25 per cent expressing support for Trump.
“The latest figures suggest that the Republican Party’s electoral gains among Indian Americans have not translated into durable support for Republican congressional candidates,” reads the study.