This project investigates Indian American partisanship. Why, despite several large cleavages like religion and income, do most Indian Americans identify with a single party? Building on a long tradition of studying partisanship, I posit that Indian-Americans share a group consciousness borne out of experiences of racial discrimination. This group consciousness drives Indian-Americans to identify as Democrats. First, I present several theories of party identification and evaluate their explanatory power, both theoretically and when applied to other groups, such as Jewish Americans and Asian-Americans. I then present an original theory of party identification in the Indian-American community. Next, I explore the nature of newspaper coverage on Indian-Americans by conducting a content analysis of New York Times and India Abroad articles. Finally, I use data from the 2016 CMPS to empirically test my theory. All together, this project provides a new way of considering a well-studied concept applied to an understudied group
