One of Australia’s top pollsters has revealed that 85% of Indians voted for Labor during the last federal election.
RedBridge Group Director Kos Samaras, a former Labor strategist, said during a debate on migration with political commentator John Macgowan on Sunday night that his research had consistently found that Indian immigrants overwhelmingly supported Labor despite being socially conservative.
The Indian-born population of Australia was 916,330 as of June 30 last year, according to the latest official estimates, in addition to another 200,971 “second-generation migrants” born in Australia with Indian ancestry, and 113,947 “secondary migrants” who were born in other countries but have Indian ancestry.
“85% of the Indian diaspora voted for the Labor Party at the last election, thereabouts, it varies across the country,” Mr Samaras said while arguing that Indian and Chinese immigrants were more important electorally to Labor than Muslim voters.
When asked by host Drew Pavlou what the number was he confirmed it was “about 85%” and said: “In our polling, whenever we poll them they’re about that, two-party preferred, huge numbers.”
“That’s not in a vacuum, the Liberals tried to get those votes and failed, so it’s not like they’re just naturally like that,” Macgowan interjected.
Samaras went on to say that he believed Indians were voting for Labor for “sectarian reasons”.
“We interviewed a bunch of young Indian men in Sydney, probably about six months ago, had a long conversation with them and we said ‘okay, what are your values?’,” he said.
“We went through all their values across a whole range of things and they were clearly conservative, they should be voting Liberal, and we said to them ‘so why aren’t you voting Liberal?’ [and they said] ‘they don’t like us.’”
A 2022 survey by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace also found that newer Indian arrivals were nearly twice as likely to support Labor than the Coalition, and a DFAT statistical snapshot from last year found Indian voters were ideologically centre-right but more likely to vote Labor.
Mr Samaras’ comments come after politicians from both major parties celebrated Indian Independence Day on August 15, including pro-multiculturalism Opposition immigration spokesman Paul Scarr, who attended an India Day Fair in Queensland on Sunday with a dot painted on his forehead.
Australia’s Indian-born population is expected to hit 1.1 million in 2026, according to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, up from 95,000 in 2001.
Header image: Left, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese pandering to Indian immigrants. Right, Paul Scarr doing the same on Sunday (Facebook, X).
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