Could the low numbers for the Republicans have something to do with the candidate himself? Could this be because John McCain was not first choice for Indian American GOP stalwarts?
It could be either a lack of enthusiasm for McCain, or extra enthusiasm for Obama, or both. Initially Obama's campaign annoyed a lot of Indian Americans by referring to Senator Clinton as the Democrat from Punjab, a remark that was perceived as stereotyping, but I think Obama has made amends since then.
Also, many Indian Americans see this as a historic election because even though Obama is not Indian American, he could become the first non-white President of the US -- that is to say, the country's first minority president.
How scientific was this study?
This is state of the art in terms of how we created the sample and how we did interviews. First of all, we have a very large survey, and that reduces margin of error. Another thing we did was, unlike a lot of pollsters who will call a number once or twice and move on, we called each number up to six times, till we reached someone.
And how did you obtain the list of Indian Americans to call?
We got that through a company that has a list of all registered voters in the US, and then they do an analysis on the basis of names. On top of that, we added commercial vendor lists, because in our survey we contacted not just registered voters but Indian Americans more generally.
Image: Popular Indian American actor Kalpen Modi alias Kal Penn at the Democratic National Convention in Denver.
Photograph: Paresh Gandhi
Also read: Who won the debate?
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