Analysis: Was Hillary's Union Support Limited to (Some of) the Public Sector?

The 74 Million ^ | February 14, 2017 | Mike Antonucci

[2ndDivisionVet]

xit polls from the 2016 presidential election indicate that Hillary Clinton won the union household vote by only nine points, a much smaller margin than is traditional for Democratic candidates and a contributing factor in Donald Trump’s win, particularly in the battleground states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.

Harold Meyerson of The American Prospect thinks Trump’s strength in union households may have been racial in nature. “Whites from union households preferred Trump over Clinton, 52 percent to 40 percent,” he wrote, citing an unidentified network exit poll. If accurate, race must have played a big part, but we lack enough information about those union households to make a reliable judgment.

Did union members vote one way and their families another? Did blue-collar union members vote one way and white-collar another? Or, as statistics derived from the annual report on union membership by the Bureau of Labor Statistics suggest, did public-sector union members vote one way and private-sector union members another?

Since 1983, when it began collecting such data, the BLS has documented a continuing decline in the percentage of private-sector workers who belong to unions, reaching a low of 6.4 percent in 2016. Public employee union membership, on the other hand, has remained relatively steady, only dropping from 36.8 percent in 1983 to 34.4 percent in 2016.

One obvious effect on the organized labor movement is greater reliance on public policy, which can sometimes lead to friction between the sectors. For example, increases in the size of government have tangible benefits for public-sector unions, but tax increases to pay for expansion may have a detrimental effect on the incomes and employment of private-sector workers....

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About one in five American Federation of Teachers (AFT) members who cast a ballot voted for Trump, the union’s leader estimated. Among the larger National Education Association (NEA), which comprises more than 3 million members, more than one in three who voted did so for the billionaire developer, early data show. USA Today

[Gay State Conservative]

The Former Twelfth Lady won DC by 90% to 5%.Populated entirely by recipients of a government check (payroll or welfare).Yet she couldn’t come close to winning IN,OH,MI or PA,perhaps the four most heavily unionized states in the country.

[peeps36]

Trump support was racial according to this clown. I don't know what that means when both candidates were white. Maybe the democrats have moved too far to the left for millions of union members. That wouldn't surprise me.