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Are South Asians moving to the right?
New Jersey, home to one of the largest Desi populations in the country, experienced its closest presidential election since 1992.
Astha Lakhankar
February 04, 2025
South Asians have historically been considered a stalwart voting bloc for the Democratic Party. But recent data and political messaging suggest the population is undergoing a slight shift to the right.
Election exit polls show that Asian American support for Donald Trump increased between 2020 and 2024 by 6 percent.
In New Jersey, which experienced its closest presidential election since 1992, there was a 4 percent uptick in support for Trump among Asian Americans. In Middlesex County, one of the largest South Asian enclaves in the U.S., Trump received 6 percent more votes in 2020 than in 2024.
Notably, a recent survey from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace found that Indian-Americans identifying as Democrats decreased from 56 percent to 47 percent between 2020 and 2024.
We were able to flip people. What we were able to do is get people that are Democrats and make them understand that they're really Republicans. They're closet Republicans.
South Asian disassociation from the Democratic Party is something that Priti Pandya-Patel says she has seen firsthand as the chairwoman of the New Jersey Republican Party’s (NJGOP) South Asian Coalition.
“People came up to me and said, ‘Priti, I'm really Democrat, but I'm voting for Trump because I like what he's done,’” she told Central Desi.
Pandya-Patel has been involved with the NJGOP since 2017 when she ran for a spot on Middlesex County’s Board of County Commissioners, campaigning alongside then-lieutenant governor and gubernatorial candidate Kim Guadagno.
In 2021, Republican candidate Jack Ciattarelli tapped Pandya-Patel to help his gubernatorial campaign connect with South Asian voters, specifically Indian Americans.
“I helped him get into the South Asian community during that time…. He was able to get introduced to the Indian community, the Indian culture, the whole thing,” she said. “I had an opportunity to take him to all these different venues. We went to Navaratri and garba. We went to temples.”
Pandya-Patel admits these efforts were not enough to capture the population’s support for Ciattarelli, who failed to secure Asian American-heavy counties like Middlesex and Bergen, according to election results.
The experience prompted Pandya-Patel to form the NJGOP’s South Asian Coalition, which aims to encourage South Asians to register and vote Republican. As Pandya-Patel sees it, despite the community’s historical connection to the Democratic Party, South Asian values more closely resemble those of conservatives.
According to Pandya-Patel, many South Asians feel strongly about issues like lowering taxes, bolstering science and math education, and advocating against marijuana legalization, all which align with the Republican platform.
“We were able to flip people. What we were able to do is get people that are Democrats and make them understand that they're really Republicans,” she said. “They're closet Republicans.”
Askar Mirza, a Pakistani-American student at Rutgers and member of the student group Rutgers Republicans, sees things similarly.
“We are natural allies, in my opinion, for the GOP, and it's great to see party establishment and even grassroots understand that,” said Mirza. “I think the Republican tent is growing bigger, and South Asian Americans have a big role to play in that.”
During George W. Bush’s presidency, rhetoric surrounding the War on Terror heightened stigma against Muslim Americans and pushed South Asians toward the Democratic Party. Now, Republicans are moving away from Bush-era rhetoric, and the current iteration of the GOP is far more diverse, according to Mirza.
He points to South Asian Americans holding key positions in Trump’s incoming administration, including FBI director nominee Kash Patel and former head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) Vivek Ramaswamy, as a sign that the party establishment is taking notice of the population.
Still, the rise of these high-profile South Asian conservatives should not be mistaken for the entire community moving rightward, warns Sudip Bhattacharya, a doctoral student at Rutgers who studies political coalition-building in communities of color.
Bhattacharya told Central Desi that while South Asian support for Democrats might have slightly eroded over the past year, it does not necessarily mean voters have flipped to the Republican Party.
Instead, segments of the Democratic voter base, propelled by disagreements with party establishment and political fatigue, might have chosen to withdraw their support.
This follows a greater trend of apathy, something that Bhattacharya said he has noticed among younger voters, including those of South Asian heritage.
“I think for the first time in my last few years of teaching, I noticed that more students just didn't even care,” he said. “They didn't pay attention. They didn't know.”
Bhattacharya notes that this dip in enthusiasm could be linked to a cynicism about the political process and fears that this kind of indifference among young South Asian voters could allow for conservatives to mobilize the community more easily.
“It's not so much everyone flipping over to the right wing,” he said. “It's more like people don't get the danger we're in while this other force is kind of growing.”
Sangay Mishra, an associate professor of political science at Drew University and author of “Desis Divided: The Political Lives of South Asian Americans,” told Central Desi that while South Asian voters remain heavily Democratic, recent survey data shows that conservatism has made an inroad with one particular segment of the population: young American-born Desi men.
Referencing the Carnegie survey on Indian-American political preferences, Mishra notes that U.S.-born men aged 18-39 were more likely than other Indian Americans to support Trump.
Mishra suggests that some factors driving this specific group rightward could be “their notion of masculinity, their own understanding of what America should be like and their notion of ‘model minority.’”
Ultimately, these political trends and shifts will need to play out over time, he contends.
“It's a period in which things are unclear,” Mishra said. “There is no doubt that the community is still solidly Democratic. The fear that is being created would also generate some amount of conversation within the community (about how) we need to be careful about how we think about our politics.”
Astha Lakhankar is a 2024-25 reporting fellow at Central Desi. She is a recent graduate of Rutgers University, where she worked as managing editor of the student-run newspaper, The Daily Targum.
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