Romney Stirs Up Challenge on Unions’ Own Turf

The Cutting Edge News ^ | June 22, 2012 | Sean Lengell, The Washington Times

[2ndDivisionVet]

Mitt Romney has pushed the 2012 electoral battleground into union-friendly territory — putting organized labor on the defensive in states it typically has little trouble holding. A recent demoralizing election loss in Wisconsin and simmering disappointment with President Obama poses further challenges for labor to rally its troops this election season.

Among the 10 or so swing states where the presumptive Republican presidential nominee is battling President Obama, about half are populous, union-heavy states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin, where in most polls Mr. Obama holds precarious single-digits poll leads.

Mr. Romney is performing particularly strongly in Ohio and Wisconsin, where the president is hanging on to average poll leads of only 1.8 percentage points and 3.4 percentage points, respectively, according to a composite of polls compiled by the website Real Clear Politics.

Several other swing states feature right-to-work laws that significantly handcuff union power. They include Florida, Virginia, Iowa and North Carolina. In each, neither candidate has more than a 4-percentage-point average lead, Real Clear Politics says. “Unions have good reason to be worried about their political position, especially in state and public unions,” said Charles Franklin, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. “Unions have a challenge in unifying their membership to support them and their candidates at the ballot box.”

Organized labor is smarting after a high-profile loss in Wisconsin this month, when the electorate voted to keep Gov. Scott Walker — and his anti-union policies — in office. Unions, livid at the Republican for his 2011 law to curtail public-sector collective-bargaining rights, pushed back hard with a massive ground game to defeat him in a recall election. Yet almost 40 percent of union households voted to support the governor.

Union_activists say the Wisconsin recall has bolstered, not depressed, their resolve....

[entropy12]

Union_activists say the Wisconsin recall has bolstered, not depressed, their resolve....

What else can they say? That Walker kicked their butt in WI? lol

[GOP Poet]

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[LS]

We have to be careful with the Realclearpolitics averages as the include ridiculous outliers such as Bloomberg, which is off at the national level is off by more than 10 points at best.