Washington: The Democratic Party won 85 of the 100 congressional districts with the largest Indian-American populations in Tuesday’s midterm elections, up from the 79 it held going into the vote, an HT analysis of election data found. The party held all but one of its own seats in these districts and took seven from Republicans, whose tally fell to 15 from 21.
The ranking uses the district boundaries in place for the 2024 elections. Most of the top 100 seats kept their old lines, but in a handful the new maps helped decide the result. Democratic dominance was strongest in California, where the party won 19 of the 20 top-100 seats. Democrats also won every top-100 seat in New York, Illinois, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Republican Trever Nehls won Texas’s 22nd district, which has about 45,000 Indian residents. After the party redrew the state’s 32nd district, home to about 16,000 Indian residents on the old boundaries, Republican Jace Yarbrough won the seat, previously held by Democrat Julie Johnson. A Carnegie Endowment–YouGov survey conducted in October found that 62% of Indian-American citizens planned to back Democratic House candidates, against 19% for Republicans. In Senate races, the split was 63% to 21%. In 2024, by comparison, Carnegie found 31% of Indian American registered voters planning to vote for Trump.
These included the 17th district, the most heavily Indian American seat in the country, which Congressman Ro Khanna won for a sixth consecutive term. Democrat Ami Bera won the 3rd district, a seat previously held by a Republican, after California redrew its map. About nine states, including California and Texas, redrew their maps for this election, so population figures for some seats in those states are approximate. The Democratic wave also cost two Republican members of the House India caucus their seats: Brian Fitzpatrick in Pennsylvania and Tom Kean Jr in New Jersey. Texas also delivered one of the Republicans’ few pickups. The results largely track the community’s political leanings.
The district includes Sugar Land, where Texas Republican Senate candidate Alexander Duncan sparked outrage in 2025 by calling a 90-foot Hanuman statue at a local Hindu temple a “false statue of a false Hindu God”.
