Washington: An overwhelming majority of Indian-Americans, 84 per cent, voted for U.S. Democratic incumbent Barack Obama in November’s presidential election, according to a survey of 800 Asian-Americans by a leading think tank here. While 77 per cent of all Asian-Americans voted for Mr. Obama, Vietnamese-origin Americans alone bucked the overall trend as 54 per cent of them voted for his Republican rival Mitt Romney.
Unveiling the results of the AALDEF Exit Poll, a 50-state survey of 9,096 Asian American voters, the Asian-American Legal Defence and Education Fund (AALDEF) said in a conference call on Thursday that 13 per cent of Asian-Americans who were registered Republicans had crossed over and voted for Mr. Obama.
Among independent voters, or those not registered with either party, 73 per cent of the surveyed Asian-Americans voted the President into a second term at the White House. Within the Indian-American population, 65 per cent were registered Democrat and only 9 per cent registered Republican. First-time voters comprised 29 per cent of the Indian-Americans surveyed.
The results for Asian- and Indian-Americans are broadly consistent with the results across states that President Obama won on November 6 last year. Popular support across the nation, however, was a closer call and Mr. Romney almost garnered half the total vote.
