I don’t assume that South Asians are going to identify with Republicans. I am just saying that for now, they might identify with the Dems but vote Republican for a few cycles. Yes, you are right, an agnostic might as well be a martian. He will never get elected. But I was just making a point that a lot of “browns” are fiscal cons and they might vote for the Republican if he/she didn’t advertise his social conservatism, approved of diversity and was not identified with the Christian Right.

why not talk about a half-martian half-brown guy? no open agnostic/atheist can be open about their lack of belief in the USA and expect to get more than local political office starting out (pete stark of california is an atheist, but he’s been in congress for a long time, and only came out a few years ago).

as for brown people being more than overwhelming liberal democrats, i’d be happy for a change. but i would also bet money it isn’t going to happen soon. the republicans are currently the white party, the early 90s flirtation of asian americans with the repubs was not robusdt.

Aww, sorry kid. Know how you feel. They won’t let me run for President. Yet.

There’s another explanation here as well, http://www.gallup.com/poll/125423/Americans-Postgraduate-Education-Back-Obama.aspx

58% of Americans with postgraduate degrees approve of Obama, this was true earlier during election season as well: http://www.gallup.com/poll/106381/obama-education-gap-extends-general-election.aspx

40% of Indian-Americans have postgraduate degrees — that’s five times the national average. So, not counting the whole evangelical pro-christian element of the republicans, education alone can explain the tilt. Obama remains the choice of a majority of educated folks because, well, he doesn’t pander to stupidity all the time like the opposition.

Jindal has become too identified with the Christian Right and no lay South Asian American (unless you count extreme political junkies) has heard of Nikki Haley. Have a half brown guy who is agnostic/atheist but a strong fiscal con and you might see some South Asian American interest.

The South Asian American vote is not static. A lot of those “liberal browns” don’t support redistribution. They don’t like deficits. Their voting patterns might change. I am not sure about whether South Asians will change their identification with the Democratic Party. But Asians, like they did in Virginia with the governor’s race, will swing republican for a few years until the Democratic Party becomes sane.

the data i’ve seen is that american-born brown are standard issue liberals. so no, i don’t think politically we’re too diverse or heterogeneous (i say this as a brown non-liberal). SALT or whatever has surveys on this; i think they oversample from areas where brownz are really liberal, but the direction of the findings are pretty indisputable. OTOH, i don’t see that many brown americans are super-motivated by south asian issues specifically. south asia is messed up (terrorism, communalism, cretinism), but not in a way like israel or cuba where the USA is stuck in the middle or has made it a specifically american issue. the only caveat here is that only a small minority of american jews are israel-only voters, but they have a disproportionate weight in measuring the “jewish vote” (because other jews are just standard issue liberals, by and large). so i guess you could have a “indian vote” which is actually the collective action of a small minority of american brown voters.

as for electing south asians, etc., or mobilizing brownz in a broad based way like you’d mobilize labor or feminists, it seems amusingly bizarre to me. how many people here are super jazzed up by bobby jindal or nikki haley? if you’re conservative you are, but otherwise you’d probably prefer a liberal, race no bar.

Desis are far too diverse and heterogeneous for identity politics to apply. Political activism may help our various individual interests, and getting better US policy towards South Asian countries may matter to some of us, but I don’t see what sort of benefit South Asians in general derive from political activism.

just to be clear, i assume you mean 10% of 13%, so 1.3%. if someone read quickly they might just assume 10% of the total….