Indian Americans have mostly voted for Democrats in the presidential elections. On November 3, they can do more, Democrats believe, and put former Vice-President Joe Biden in the White House.

The number of Indian Americans who voted in these three states in 2016, or did not, could not be immediately ascertained. But the countrywide turnout for the community was 62%, according to AAPI Data, the study cited by AAPI Victory Fund. It was the highest among AAPI communities with Japanese Americans, and was 6 points above the national turnout of 56%. 

“The Indian American vote — the AAPI more broadly — can be an absolute difference maker,” Tom Perez, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said at a power-packed pitch to them at a virtual ton-hall recently, pointing to their demographics in the three Rust Belt swing states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania that put Donald Trump in the White House in a stunning upset in 2016. The broader group AAPI in Perez’s remarks, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, include people of Indian, Chinese, Filipino, Korean, Japanese and Indonesian descent.

President Donald Trump won these three states narrowly by 0.2, 0.7 and 0.8 percentage points, respectively — 10,704, 46,765 and 22,177 votes. Together, they gave him their cumulative 46 electoral votes, a 304-227 victory over Hillary Clinton and the White House. (There are in all 538 electoral votes that decide a presidential elections in the US, not the popular vote, which Clinton won, in this instance by more than 3 million; 7 electors voted against their pledges).

Indian Americans of voting age are in sufficient numbers in these states to obliterate Trump’s lead and put Biden across the finishing line, Democrats have argued.

There are 125,000 Indian American voters in Michigan, 156,000 in Pennsylvania and 37,000 in Wisconsin, according to an analysis by AAPI Victory Fund, a Democratic group dedicated to ensuring the victory of AAPI candidates that had hosted the town-hall.

The number of Indian Americans who voted in these three states in 2016, or did not, could not be immediately ascertained. But the countrywide turnout for the community was 62%, according to AAPI Data, the study cited by AAPI Victory Fund. It was the highest among AAPI communities with Japanese Americans, and was 6 points above the national turnout of 56%.

There are an estimated 4 million people of Indian origin in the United States, but only about a third are eligible to vote — 1.3 million, according to AAPI Data. The rest are not, because they are either still on Green Card or are awaiting the completion of their naturalization process.

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