MI-GOV: Poll Finds Union Support for Republican
A new poll from the Michigan governor’s race highlights Democrats’ continuing challenges in luring Reagan Democrats back to the party in the Midwest.
The June poll found that 48 percent of the respondents backed Michigan gubernatorial candidate Dick DeVos (R) compared to 40 percent for incumbent Democrat Gov. Jennifer Granholm (see graphic summary of results).
An important detail is that DeVos holds his eight point advantage in union households where, as a Democrat, Granholm should be expected to poll favorably. Granholm also fared poorly amongst men, independents and voters who ranked the economy as the number one issue facing the state.
One caveat to the results: DeVos has run extensive TV ads for months, whereas Granholm has only recently started airing her own ads. It also surely can’t help that Michigan currently has the second highest level of unemployment in the country.
Conventional-thinking Democrats beware, whatever party speaks truth to corporate power on the immigration issue has a great chance of winning in November. It won't matter much whether it's an election for national or state office.
The massive inflow of illegal immigrants willing to put up with low wages and terrible benefits and working conditions causes a race to the bottom and forces the whole working class to accept those conditions or not have jobs. And, mass immigration creates terrible over-supply-of-labor conditions for organizing unions. This hurts the US working poor and low-skill members of our working class. Those groups, whose numbers include disproportionate numbers of blacks and Latinos, are vital for a _real_ Democratic Party to have any chance of electoral success. I hope the Democratic Party decides to sacrifice its tiny ethnic elite vote and make a play for them.
June 14, 2006 8:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
Much of Midwestern politics is essentially urban politics. For example, I have spent most of the past 2 years living in Missouri, where barring some small pockets of Democrats the state is pretty much defined by the Democratic large cities (St. Louis, Kansas City, and to a lesser extent, Columbia) and rural and small-city Republican areas (everywhere else). Thus, what generally determines who wins an election in Missouri is voter turnout, in particular how many African-Americans in St. Louis and Kansas City turn up at the polls. What does this mean? It means that the appeal of a candidate to lower and middle income urban minority voters is significant in determining who wins the election. It at least seems to me that candidates who appeal to these constituencies in the Midwest have been lacking in recent years, the one exception coming to mind being Barack Obama. I guess what I'm trying to say is that urban voter turnout is especially important in the Midwest, probably more so than appealing to "Reagan Democrats," and considering that many Reagan Democrats are indeed white (unlike suburban whites, blacks did not leave the Democrats en masse for Reagan), appeals to Reagan Democrats might actually hurt our chances of winning by depressing urban minority voter turnout.
Also, just from personal observation, union households in the Midwest tend to be working class (obviously), which means they also often have conservative instincts when it comes to social issues and national security issues. So long as economic issues are not at the forefront of a race for office, I can't see why it is so hard to understand why union members would vote for a moderate Republican (although personally I think they would be foolish for doing so).
June 15, 2006 9:59 AM | Reply | Permalink