Poll: Majority of union workers back Obama
Washington (CNN) - Nearly six in ten union workers say they're backing President Barack Obama in November's general election, according to a new national survey.
A Gallup poll released Monday indicates that 57% of registered union workers say they support Obama, with 35% saying they back Republican presidential challenger Mitt Romney.
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According to the survey, 44% of non-union workers say they'll support the president, with 48% saying they'll back Romney, the former Massachusetts governor and presumptive GOP nominee. The poll indicates that union workers make up about 12% employed voters.
The numbers are not a surprise, as union workers historically have backed Democratic candidates for president. According to CNN national exit polls from the 2008 election, Obama beat Sen. John McCain 61%-38% among union workers, who made up 11% of the vote.
Unions and politics were a major topic last week in Wisconsin, where organized labor battled unsuccessfully to oust Republican Gov. Scott Walker in a recall election. Walker and GOP state lawmakers last year pushed through a measure that put restrictions on collective bargaining rights for public sector union workers.
The Gallup survey was part of Gallup's Daily Tracking poll, with 13,376 employed registered voters questioned by telephone from April 11-June 5. The poll's overall sampling error is plus or minus one percentage point, and a sampling error of plus or minus four percentage points for questions only of union workers.
CNN Political Editor Paul Steinhauser contributed to this report
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Tell me something we don't know. The President isn't out on the campaign trail trying to strip away union rights. That's clearly the republican strategy.
It makes sense. Everyday Americans are backing the one presidential candidate who is for Americans.
Obama/Biden 2012
Union members know that an Obama loss could result in a reduction in their inflated salaries and benefits. Taxpayers for Romney.
The majority of people in Wisconsin, who voted to keep Mr. Walker in as Governor, just don't realize what they did to themselves, do they? Their only saving grace is that the Governor has to get past the majority of Democrats in Congress now.
Sorry but there are not enough of tem and many will back Romney as they figure out that the key s jobs and not empty promises.
CNN is this really new news?! Mr. Obama has bought and paid for the unions many times over. However, that does not mean individual union members REALLY support the wholesale/discounted purchase. (CNN may want to do some research on this issue.)
Probably the most aggravating and shameful issue is that Mr. Obama has bought and and paid for union support with taxpayer dollars.
Oh well, that's "Hope and Change" for America!
And the lying games continue...
a Republican being a union member is an oxy moron..
I do not care these, but I strongly support Obama because I am well-educated. Yes on obama12. Period.
I think there is nothing more American than worker unions. And, there is nothing more un-American and anti-capitalism to be against worker unions. What is wrong with groups of people getting together to form a business that supplies private and public industry with skilled, trained, and certified workers? Doesn't it go against the whole "free market" idea we keep hearing tossed around to be against any sort of private business?
Why are we being taught that unions are bad for capitalism? [It isn't.] Was it not workers in the former Soviet Bloc who formed unions and eventually tossed off the oppression of communisim? What sort of people would be against unions?
35% saying they back Republican presidential challenger Mitt Romney. why it make no sense at all none what`t so ever. I wonder if that 35% got the memo from Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels: Let's Be Done With Public-Sector Unions.
They are both destoying the country, no surprise.
Dean wrote:
Union members know that an Obama loss could result in a reduction in their inflated salaries and benefits. Taxpayers for Romney.
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Corporate greed knows that an Obama victory means that cannot continue writing the rules and stacking the deck in their favor. I think all of this anti-union talk is as anti-free markets as one can get. What is so wrong with starting businesses that supplies trained and certifiied workers. Like I pointed out above, it was the formation of unions that allowed Eastern Europeans to throw of the schackles of the Iron Curtain. The communists were against the unions.
Corporations want to keep your mind off the fact that they are unionized, too. K Street lobbyists are representatives of the union of corporations. ALEC and the Chamber of Commerce are really just unions of corporations. Corporations band together to promote legislation for their benefit, and they are well on their way to the total annihilation of the middle class. Anything that may be said about the potential harm of unions can be said more emphatically for the danger of corporations.
The time for UNions is past and it is time taxpayers realize their needs to be a "reality check". Obama is bought and paid for by the Unions, he wants more public sector Unions which will equal bigger government and more control for him. The man is so out of touch with the world that he even made the statement this weekend "the private sector is doing fine". Has he not looked at the job numbers and does he not take into account how much worse they are when you factor in those not on the unemployment rolls. How can citizens believe such crap and not see the damage an inexperienced man has done to this country????