August 25, 2008

New Poll: Obama Can Win Reagan Dems With Economic Populism

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A new poll released today at the Democratic National Convention suggests that a strong message of economic populism would help Barack Obama with blue-collar workers. The poll, conducted by Lake Research Partners, was released at a Change to Win press conference in Denver this morning. Change To Win is a coalition of seven largely service-worker-oriented unions that broke off from the AFL-CIO in 2005. The coalition has been especially active in electoral politics since then, and plans to commit tens of millions of dollars and thousands of volunteer hours to electing Barack Obama in November.

The Lake poll focused on the idea of the American Dream, which labor contends has been disappearing in recent years. Most of the “working Americans” surveyed agreed, with 79% saying the American Dream has become harder to achieve in recent years. Economic populism is very popular with the workers surveyed: By overwhelming numbers, American workers support a progressive tax system, guaranteed health care, and fair trade. They also support Barack Obama by a two-to-one margin. There’s also bad news for Obama in the survey, and you’ve heard it before: white workers are split between Obama and McCain. But the results offer hope:

Senator Obama can win white working Americans over. While Senator McCain and
Senator Obama remain locked in a tight battle for the votes of white working Americans, a
solid majority believe Senator Obama understands their economic struggles (59%) and would
be able to improve wages and working conditions if he were President (51%). They have a
net positive opinion of Senator Obama (+10, 50 percent favorable, 40 percent unfavorable)
and they tend to think Senator McCain is the one who is more influenced by big corporations
and CEOs (42% McCain, 16% Obama). White working Americans also believe it is Senator
Obama who has the best vision for restoring the American Dream (39% Obama, 25%
McCain), and that Senator Obama best represents the values of the American Dream (41%
Obama, 35% McCain).

White workers may be split, but there seems to be a lot of evidence that Obama can win more of them to his side. How successful he is at doing that could determine the outcome of the election. It’ll be interesting to watch. You can find the full poll results here.

Photo by flickr user Saad.Akhtar used under a Creative Commons license.

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