> Election-night polling by Peter Hart for the AFL-CIO showed that 67
> percent of union members voted for Obama while only 30 percent chose
> McCain. (Compare that to the 51 to 47 percent advantage Obama had over
> McCain in exit polls of non-union voters.) The union advantage was
> slightly higher in battleground states.
>
> Most dramatically, union membership made a big difference in how well
> Obama performed. Union members over 65 voted by a 46-point margin for
> Obama, while all voters over 65 voted for McCain by an 8-point margin.
> Obama won by 23 points among white non-college graduates who belong to
> a union, even as he lost by 18 points among all white non-college voters.
>
> Obama lost heavily among gun owners and white weekly
> churchgoers—except if they were union members. Then they voted for
> Obama, though by slim margins.
As I just wrote to a friend, given these numbers, if union density went up by just a few percentage points, the Republicans would never win another election.
SA