“He is a business guy and has a clean slate, but what are his promises? Does he care about medical care for the elderly? What are his plans for infrastructure spending? He doesn’t have fixed positions and has not articulated his policies yet,” the BBC reported Shekar Narasimhan, founder and chairman of the AAPI (Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders) Victory Fund, as saying.

Among likely GOP primary voters, Trump comes out on top in a crowded field with almost 43 per cent of the vote, while Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who is likely to jump into the presidential fray as soon as mid-May, lands at just under 35 per cent, according to polling firm Victory Insights.

Ramaswamy, the youngest in the race, pulls in at a distant third with about four per cent, while Haley has support of just over three per cent. A JL Partners poll shows Haley and Ramaswamy head-to-head getting three per cent and two per cent of GOP primary votes, while the Harvard-Harris poll gives four per cent to Haley, and a mere two per cent to Ramaswamy.

Meanwhile, Indian-American Republicans are speculating a “three-way race between Trump, DeSantis and Haley”, and prefer to wait instead of forging early alliances, considering Trump’s legal battles, according to BBC. Even if Haley or Ramaswamy manage to edge past these polls, which is highly unlikely according to political pundits, Indian-Americans -- as observed previously -- are more likely to vote for the Democrats.

A survey by the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund found that 72 per cent of Indian-Americans voted for Joe Biden in the 2020 elections. According to Wall Street Journal columnist Sadanand Dhume, the odds that either Haley or Ramaswamy will win the nomination “appear vanishingly small”.

“Nonetheless, their candidacies puncture the corrosive myth that America is a racist nation constantly threatened by the phantom of white supremacy,” Dhume said.