Labor voters save day for Dems in states like and Ohio and Michigan, and the AFL-CIO is accumulating evidence that its political program influences, in particular, the votes of white men.
"For white men, regular church-goers -- if they're union members, we win them," said Karen Ackerman, the AFL-CIO political director. The same goes for NRA members and the larger universe of gun owners.
The outlines of the AFL-CIO's member to member effort are well known and have been widely reported on, but the organization rarely divulges details about their statewide targeting. Such information is proprietary. Ackerman shared a few numbers, though, about Ohio, numbers that suggest a fairly strong thumb on the scale for Democrats.
There are 2.1 million union voters in Ohio; the AFL-CIO has contacted an additional 1.6 million labor force voters as part of its Working America program, which allows non-union members to associate with the AFL-CIO.
Working America is now an integral part of the AFL's program, and it almost doubles the universe of voters that the AFL-CIO is able to contact. In 2006, only 42% of Working America members self-identified as Democrats. 79% of Working America members voted for Gov. Ted Strickland -- a correlation, to be sure, but a strong one.
An AFL-CIO official said that internal union research showed that worksite contacts are as much as 30 times more effective than non-personal direct mail pieces. And every union member will be contacted at least 25 times through the course of the program. In addition, the AFL-CIO has around 500 field organizers making phone calls every night.
Special targets this year include seniors, retirees and veterans. AFL-CIO officials were reluctant to say whether they had detected any racial prejudice from members; in any event, much of their persuasion mail that's been made public has focused on demythologizing Barack Obama and highlighting his family's working class background.
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