Bay Area Priya
 | |
| Era | The Modern Era |
|---|---|
| Age | 28-38 |
| Home | San Francisco, CA |
| Demographic | tech, Indian-American, progressive |
| Lean | Strong Democrat |
| Race | asian |
| Predecessor | Fremont Anjali |
Priya is a software engineer in her early thirties in San Francisco, Indian-American and secular. She is a well-paid progressive in the tech industry who wants the Democratic left to win, and who expects its policies to be competently made.
Who they stand for
Priya stands for the Asian-American professional left of the coastal tech cities. Indian-Americans are the most Democratic-leaning of the large Asian-American groups, and young, secular, salaried women among them are the most Democratic-leaning of all. Her formative decade includes the tech boom from 2013 to 2021, the Google employee walkout of 2018, Trump's travel ban on several Muslim-majority countries, and his 2020 suspension of H-1B skilled-worker visas, which made immigration policy a matter directly affecting her own colleagues. It also includes the political rise of Kamala Harris, who is from her home state of California. Priya backed Sanders and the Green New Deal in the Democratic primaries when the party's centre did not, and she later voted for Biden and then for Harris without much enthusiasm.
Fremont Anjali, her mother's generation, opposed race-based affirmative action in university admissions in order to protect her daughter's chances of being admitted. Priya, now admitted to university herself, feels no such fear. On the one issue that split Asian-American voters in California in 2020, Priya supported Proposition 16, the unsuccessful ballot measure that would have restored affirmative action in the state.
Playing to them
Priya responds well to climate legislation that includes a real enforcement mechanism, to technology regulation that names the specific harm it addresses, and to an immigration bill that fixes the skilled-visa backlog as well as the border. A president who advances her climate agenda also keeps the support of College Chloe and Woodstock Allen, but loses the support of Texas Tom, Heartland Hank and Montana Matt, who regard the Environmental Protection Agency as an enemy, and of Rust Belt Rick, who reads any new emissions rule as another closed factory. She will not forgive an oil drilling lease, a fracking permit, or a border wall, and she treats any gesture against vaccines as disqualifying in a candidate.
Slogans without a real policy plan bore Priya rather than anger her. Because she does not vote Republican, the risk for a Democratic president is that she becomes indifferent rather than that she switches sides. Country Club Craig loses support on every financial or technology regulation that wins Priya's support, which makes the two of them the most reliable trade-off in the cast.
Where they live
The five states where Bay Area Priya makes up the largest share of the electorate in the modern era:
- Hawaii
- California
- New York
- New Jersey
- Washington
Lineage
Daly City Marilou → Fremont Anjali → Bay Area Priya
Immigrant professional women in the Bay Area, Democrats in all three decades and further left in each. Marilou is a Catholic nurse: for the union and health spending, against abortion. Anjali is a non-religious engineer: for skilled immigration and science funding, against affirmative action because it threatens her daughter's admissions. Priya is the daughter's generation: a software engineer who supports the Green New Deal and Bernie Sanders. Each is further left because her workplace is further left, and the religion is gone by the third. Priya got into a good university and never thinks about how, so Anjali's admissions concern is invisible to her.