>> I was recently reading a dissertation about an Ohio governor you may
>> remember, James Rhodes. (Yes, I do this voluntarily.) He rose through
>> the Ohio Republican Party in the 30's-50's and there were lengthy
>> quotes from a national GOP governors' seminar around the late 50's on
>> "how do you win the union vote?" And a predominant sentiment in the
>> room seemed to be: "It's hopeless. The workers look to the union
>> leaders for guidance, and they hate us and think we're in bed with
>> evil bosses against the working man. We can never win their vote."
>
> FWIW, IIRC correctly, Republican party activists still believe and
> voice exactly the same sentiments about union workers today.
>
> There were several good long articles written about the 2004 battle of
> voter registration drives (which the Republicans seem to have won).
> And IIRC, one of the techniques professional Republican canvassers
> invariably used was to work in a question early as to whether the head
> of household belonged to a union -- and if so, to close up the
> conversation politely and not register that household.
You're overlooking a crucial difference. In the Midwest industrial states, union density in 1964 (the earliest year for Census numbers) was around 40%. In Michigan it was 45%. A decade earlier it was even higher. That means when those states' politicians talked about "the union vote" back then they were using the term almost interchangeably with "the working class in my state."
Today in those states density is in the mid-teens. And I think the political effect of union density isn't linear, it rises with scale: The political difference between 40% and 10% density is much more than four-fold; it's the difference between the unions as a mid-sized interest group and the existence of a "union town." In a union town, the "symptoms" of union affiliation spread far beyond the union members themselves.
SA