On Wed, 19 Nov 2008, SA wrote:
> http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/4035/
> > 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.
Union political staffers have always argued that this is why the Republicans treat the EFCA as armageddon, and why pundits who usually talk social conservatism are even more visibly emotional about it than than the Repug business wing -- because this point has been passed up from their GOTV efforts. And consequently, such staffers argue, this is the argument that ought to be used to fire up standard issue mainstream liberals, who don't seem to get much excited about unions and the working class, but who could be heated with a greed for winning if they thought this was the path there.
Michael