Democrats are worried as more and more union members are supporting Donald Trump for president.
A recent AFL-CIO poll found that Trump has more support than Hillary and Bernie Sanders combined.
Police union leaders stand with Donald Trump in New York.
95% of union donations flow to Democratic candidates and causes.
The Guardian reported:
Trump is resonating with voters who are struggling to make ends meet and who are seeing their friends’ jobs shipped abroad, says John Cakmakci, president of United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 951 in Michigan. And some of those voters are union members. Trump’s populist positions on trade and his rejection of Washington politics have earned him votes across the Rust Belt, where several battleground states are key to winning the election in November…
…Working America, the political organizing arm of AFL-CIO, wanted to find out whether Trump’s “rightwing” message appealed to workers outside Cleveland and Pittsburgh. After interviewing about 1,689 working-class Americans living in households earning less than $75,000, they found out that Trump was in fact the favored candidate. Of the 800 voters who had decided on a candidate at the time of the interview, about 300 favored Trump. Combined, the two Democratic candidates appealed to fewer workers – 174 chose Clinton and 95 chose Sanders.
“While most of Trump’s support comes from the staunch Republican base, one in four Democrats who chose a candidate showed a preference for Trump,” said Working America’s report.
The majority of respondents said they supported the candidate because of his pugnacious personality rather than for, say, his position on trade.
On Tuesday, Jared Szczesny, a card-carrying member of the United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America Union (UAW), will cast his vote for Trump in Pennsylvania’s primary. In 2008 and 2012, UAW endorsed President Obama. This time UAW has yet to endorse a candidate, but is likely to back a Democrat.
Szczesny, 31, has never attended a Trump rally. He works seven days a week and has not been able to find the time. However, back in October, he picked up Trump’s book The Art of the Deal. When he finished it, he knew that Trump had his vote.