by Tula Connell, Nov 8, 2006

The union movement made a big difference Nov. 7. We waged a massive get-out-the vote effort, reaching an unprecedented 13.4 million voters in 32 states. Since the beginning of the year, the AFL-CIO union movement has involved 205,000 volunteers who have: 

• Knocked on the doors of 8.25 million union voters.
• Made 30 million phones calls to union voters.
• Mailed 20 million pieces of mail to union homes.
• Distributed 14 million worksite fliers.

These efforts include unions affiliated with the AFL-CIO, but not individual unions’ own substantial get-out-the vote mobilization. Together, with our allies in the netroots and at the community level, we’ve made massive strides toward returning the country toward the values for which it long has stood.

While nonunion voters provided a two-point margin of victory for Democratic candidates, union households made it a five-point difference—turning a modest victory into a wave. Union households voted 74 percent to 26 percent for Democratic candidates—and union members made up one in four voters. In key battleground Senate races, union members voted 73 percent to 27 percent for Democrats.

Here’s a bit about what’s behind this incredible turn-out.

Outreach works. Some 76 percent of union members who reported receiving a lot of information from their unions on working family issues voted for Democratic candidates. That’s compared with 61 percent of union members who say they voted for a Democratic candidate after receiving little or no candidate comparison information from their unions.

Working family issues help get out the vote. Together with community groups such as ACORN, AFL-CIO activists were instrumental in spearheading and ultimately passing initiatives to pass the minimum wage in all states where it was on the ballot: Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Montana, Nevada and Ohio. In Arizona, union member support for raising the minimum wage stood at 94 percent, and Arizona AFL-CIO Communications Director Dana Kennedy says “Union members are excited to go to the polls to vote to give their hard-working neighbors a raise.” Minimum wage ballot initiatives helped bring out the vote in all six states.

Drop-off voters can be mobilized. The AFL-CIO emphasized turnout out “drop-off” voters”—those who usually don’t turn out in mid-term elections. The AFL-CIO reached out to 496,000 drop-off voters in Ohio alone. Some 79 percent of union drop-off voters in battleground states report they voted in the 2006 elections.

Working America made a big difference. Working America, the AFL-CIO community affiliate formed in 2003, has been  instrumental in our get-out-the-vote efforts. Working America, which was created to harness the power of workers who don’t have a union on the job, now includes some 1.5 million members, and canvassers every day go door to door to sign up new members.

Election night polling by Peter D. Hart Research shows that 80 percent of Working America members who had not voted in 2002 say they turned out to vote this year. Non-2002 Working America voters supported Democratic candidates for Senate by 80 percent to 20 percent. Non-2002 voters supported Democratic House candidates by 77 percent to 23 percent.

In addition to sheer numbers—more than 400,000 Working America members live in congressional districts with the 20 of the highest priority House races—the majority of Working America members (70 percent) identify themselves as moderates or conservatives. One-third are “born again” Christians and one-third are National Rifle Association (NRA) supporters.

Election night polling shows 69 percent of union members say they disapprove of Bush’s job performance. Union voters also cited the war in Iraq, the economy and jobs as top tier issues.

Days before the elections, Pew and other polls came out showing more voters were leaning Republican than Democrat. But buried in the data was another set of figures that showed the percentage of union household voters favoring Republicans actually decreased.

Many of the issues backed by Democratic candidates this year were bread and butter basics—maybe not the sweeping programs that defined Great Society and New Deal Democrats, but certainly not issues that would have been supported by conservative Dems.

Issues like raising the minimum wage. Raising the minimum wage (state and federal) was prominent in several Senate races, especially Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Arizona and Montana. Claire McCaskill, Bob Casey, and Sherrod Brown (and the DSCC) ran several ads contrasting the incumbents’ votes against raising the minimum wage to their own pay raises in Congress. James Talent refused to take a position on the minimum wage initiative, as did Jon Kyl in Arizona, while McCaskill pledged not to take a raise until the minimum wage was increased.

In more than a dozen districts up for grabs, trade issues gave Democratic candidates an edge over Republicans damaged by Iraq and the scandal involving former Rep. Mark Foley. A recent poll shows low-skilled U.S. workers are than 40 percent more likely to believe their jobs could be sent offshore. In Laying it on the Line, Transport Workers union (TWU) Legislative and Political Director Roger Tauss notes that every Democratic candidate in a competitive Senate race except Harold Ford has run at least one ad on trade issues diametrically opposed to the New Dem’s “Whatever’s good for Wall Street” free trade position.

Democratic challenger and open seat candidates ran more economic populist TV ads than all other issues combined. Polling by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner for Democracy Corps shows that a 55–40 percent majority of the public is are more interested in hearing what the candidates say about the financial pressures on average voters than about security and terrorism.

Nov. 7 was a victory for all of us who believe that hard work should be rewarded with a living wage, that shipping jobs overseas is not an American value and that the fundamental values of fairness, compassion and tolerance are compatible with—and define—liberty, patriotism and the American Way.

Let’s celebrate.

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