Why Trump victory will get a loud Telugu cheer

Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 US presidential election might have prevented Kamala Harris from creating history, but Indians have several other reasons to cheer. Among them is the India connection of Usha Chilukuri Vance, the wife of Trump’s running mate and now the vice president-elect, JD Vance.
The desi fanbase has now shifted its attention to Usha Chilukuri Vance, whose parents hail from Chilakaluripeta, Andhra Pradesh. Andhra is one of the two Telugu states.
This comes at a time when the Telugu-speaking population in the US has quadrupled from 3.2 lakh in 2016 to 12.3 lakh in 2024. Telugu is now the 11th most-spoken foreign language and the third most-spoken Indian language in the US.
Usha Chilukuri Vance was born and brought up in California, the American state with the largest Telugu-speaking population with nearly 200,000 residents.
Such is the political clout of the small Indian community in the US that Indians would have got to celebrate whichever side won the polls. Prayers were held for both the Democrats and Republicans in two villages in India.
Thousands of kilometres from the US, a temple in Tamil Nadu’s Thulasendrapuram village echoed with chants and hymns as villagers gathered to pray for Democratic Party candidate Kamala Harris. The villagers share a special affinity for Harris, as it is the ancestral home of her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, who was born in Chennai before her family moved to the United States.
Meanwhile, nearly a thousand kilometres to the north, in Andhra Pradesh’s Vadluru village, special prayers were offered for JD Vance, Donald Trump’s running mate and the Republican candidate for Vice President. Vance, who is set to become the next Vice President of the US, is married to Usha Vance, who has roots in this Andhra village.
Chilakaluripeta is the ancestral village of Usha’s parents, an engineer and a biologist. Usha was born in the United States, where her parents had emigrated.
Usha Vance, who is practising Hindu, earlier hailed JD Vance for adopting vegetarianism.

US Vice President Kamala Harris hailed her mother Shyamala Gopalan’s “courage and determination”, who came to the United States from India alone at the age of 19. (Right) Usha Chilukuri Vance met JD Vance at Yale Law School, and the couple later married in a Hindu ceremony.

With the Republican victory of Donald Trump in the US presidential election, India’s fanbase, which had fervently supported and rooted for Kamala Harris over the past four years, has now shifted its attention to Usha Chilukuri Vance.
Usha attended Yale Law School, where she met her future husband, JD Vance, in 2013. They worked together to organise a discussion group on the subject of “social decline in white America”, The New York Times reported.
She is a skilled litigator who has worked at Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP in San Francisco and Washington DC first from 2015 to 2017, before serving as a law clerk for the US Supreme Court in 2018. She returned to Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP in January 2019, according to people.com.
Usha has been instrumental in her husband’s political journey, often accompanying him to political events and providing guidance and support. Vance has described her as his “partner in every sense of the word”.
The spotlight shift from Tamil Nadu’s Kamala to Andhra Pradesh’s Usha also comes at a time when Indian-origin Americans have shown a shift from favouring the Democratic Party to the Republican Party. While historically, many Indian-Americans have leaned towards the Democratic Party, there is an increasing presence of Indian-Americans in the Republican Party as well.
The “Indian Americans at the Ballot Box” survey, released on October 28 by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, found that Indian Americans still largely support the Democratic Party.
However, it also noted a slight shift towards the Republicans within the community.
In 2024, the share of Indian Americans identifying as Democrats dropped to 57%, down from 66% in 2020, while the percentage identifying as Republicans rose from 18% to 27%, according to the survey by Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
In the Presidential election 2020, 68% of Indian Americans supported Democratic nominee Joe Biden, with 22% backing Republican incumbent Donald Trump. By 2024, this split has shifted to roughly 60% for Democratic Harris and 30% for Republican Trump.
While Indian-origin women support Harris, the men were inclined to vote for Trump.
The shift can not be just called a change in political allegiance but also shows a broader trend where Indian-origin Americans are increasingly diversifying their political affiliations and choices.
Both Kamala Harris and Usha Vance represent different facets of the Indian-American dream and experience that actually shows the diversity and achievements of the community. The Trump victory comes amid a rise in the numbers of people from Andhra Pradesh and Telangana and is bound to see a loud Telugu cheer. The desi focus will now be on Usha Chilukuri Vance.