The Democrats’ last line of defense against Republican inroads among working-class voters is continuing to crumble.
Even labor unions, which have provided Democrats their best vehicle to reach blue-collar voters, could not prevent Donald Trump from making big gains among their members without a college degree in last month’s presidential election.
Trump ran up large margins among White voters without a college degree who belong to labor unions and also significantly improved among unionized non-White workers without advanced education, according to previously unpublished results from the exit polls conducted by Edison Research and the AP VoteCast survey conducted by NORC. Those are the two major data sources measuring voters’ behavior in the election available so far.
While Vice President Kamala Harris ran strongly among union members with a college degree, Trump’s strong showing among the blue-collar components of the labor movement illuminates how high a wall of distrust Democrats face in working class communities at the close of Joe Biden’s presidency.
“Look, the Democratic Party has lost their way to some extent with working class voters,” said Ted Pappageorge, secretary treasurer of the powerful Culinary Workers Union Local 226 in Las Vegas. “When we were (knocking) at the doors … it was pretty clear that Trump was winning the fight about dealing with inflation and kitchen table issues and Democrats essentially were being viewed as the party of abortion.”
The disconnect Democrats faced in 2024 among many union members without advanced education is especially striking because it came after Biden made such a sustained effort to court them. Most observers agree Biden largely delivered on his frequent pledge to govern as “the most pro-union president in American history” with a historic array of policies that promoted organized labor and expanded opportunities for blue-collar union workers, particularly in construction and manufacturing. And yet, “regardless of the facts, Trump was more compelling to working people that he would help them” than Democrats were, said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers.
Labor unions communicate with their members far more intensively – and begin from a position of greater trust with their audience – than Democrats can ever match with the broader electorate. If even organized labor, with all those advantages, cannot arrest the drift toward Trump among workers without a college degree, it underscores the magnitude of the challenge Democrats face in regaining ground with the broader universe of working-class voters who don’t belong to unions.