Indian Americans strongly prefer Obama to Mitt Romney - India News and Travel Times Provides India-centric and other News and Features

Asian Americans likely to vote in November strongly prefer Barack Obama over Mitt Romney and among these Indian Americans show the strongest support for Obama, according to two reports released by the National Asian American Survey. The reports, drawn from a nationally representative sample of more than 3,300 interviews, offer the most comprehensive portrait of Asian American political views. “Asian American voters are getting a considerable amount of attention from the presidential campaigns this year, particularly in the battleground states of Nevada , North Carolina and Virginia ,” said Karthick Ramakrishnan, associate professor of political science at the University of California , Riverside and director of the National Asian American Survey (NAAS). “When compared to the general electorate, and even the Latino electorate, the Asian American vote is very much up for grabs at this late stage in the presidential campaign,” he stated. But the survey data show that 32 percent of likely Asian American voters remain undecided after the presidential nominating conventions, much higher than the estimated 7 percent rate among the general population. “Uncertainty is also a defining characteristic of party identification,” noted Taeku Lee, professor and chair of political science and professor of law at the University of California , Berkeley . “Given the high proportion of immigrants among the Asian American electorate, we find a much higher proportion of non-partisans than the national average.” Lee is a principal investigator of the survey and co-author of a book (with Zoltan Hajnal), “Why Americans Don’t Join The Party.” The data also show that among likely voters, 43 percent of Asian Americans support Barack Obama, while 24 percent prefer Romney. There are considerable differences by ethnic group: Indian Americans show the strongest support for Obama with 68 percent, and Samoans and Filipinos show strongest support for Romney with 39 percent and 38 percent, respectively. Democrats have a 34 percent to 18 percent advantage among Asian Americans, but a majority of Asian Americans (51 percent) are Independent or do not identify with the U.S. party system. This figure is higher than the average for the national population (40 percent). Hmong, Indian and Korean Americans most strongly identify with the Democratic Party. In a significant shift, Filipino Americans now have the strongest identification with the Republican Party, a designation that has previously consistently belonged to Vietnamese Americans. The survey was conducted by Ramakrishnan and Lee, who together have written seven books and dozens of articles on racial/ethnic politics, and have conducted 17 surveys, eight of which have included multiple-language support for Asian Americans. Project partners on the report include National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum (NAPAWF) and Asian American Justice Center (AAJC).

Indian Americans support Obamato Mitt Romney