IF Kamala Harris Wins, And IF Donald Trump Loses, Here Is A BIG Reason Why...
It's the boots on the ground, stupid.
By Peter List, Editor | November 4, 2024
Although no one knows for sure the outcome of this week’s elections, despite Donald Trump having a slight edge in certain polls and down in others, were Trump to lose the election, there will be a lot of celebration on the Left and a lot of morning-after quarterbacking among Republicans, GOP pundits, and consultants.
However, if Kamala Harris does win and Trump loses, though there may be several explanations (which will not be enumerated here), one of the biggest reasons will be the unions’ get-out-the-vote (GOTV) efforts…and Republicans’ general lack of any ground game to speak of.
Despite unions only representing ten percent of the workforce, there is no other group in America with as much organizational apparatus and the millions of dollars to pour into GOTV, and unless one is directly involved in it, few outside of labor relations circles understand how extensive the union ground game has become over the past several election cycles.
Even though union member support for Kamala Harris lags behind other, past Democratic Party presidential candidates (for reasons which also will not be enumerated here), today’s union ground game may more than make up for it.
Following Hillary Clinton’s defeat in 2016 and Donald Trump’s victory, unions have revamped their get-out-the-vote efforts to the point that, this year, according to the AFL-CIO, the federation’s “massive mobilization supporting Harris-Walz, with a sharp focus on battleground states, include…”
7.1 million union voters engaged directly in person-to-person contact, including at the doors, on the phones, and at worksites.
3 million union voters in battleground states reached through digital ads highlighting testimonials from union members. In total, the ads have received 210 million impressions.
2.5 million pieces of mail sent to union households in battleground states.
Nearly 700,000 personalized letters from local union leaders to swing union voters.
Resources provided to millions of union voters, including an in-depth guide to Trump’s Project 2025’s threat to union families.
Person-to-person contact is delivering results. Internal tracking shows that swing voters who have conversations at the door or worksite are increasing overall support for Harris by 10 points.”
“With our largest union voter mobilization in history,” Elizabeth Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO, stated earlier this month. “we’ve spent every moment over the last few months reaching union households with facts on how Kamala Harris will champion working people’s priorities while Donald Trump will dismantle unions, weaken the middle class, and give even more power to the wealthiest few. In these final days, the labor movement is putting the pedal to the metal, with tens of thousands of volunteers on the ground turning out millions of voters to the polls. Union members know we never stop fighting until the final poll is closed, and we’re going to take the fight to elect Kamala Harris and Tim Walz all the way.”
While the AFL-CIO consists of 60 different unions, several major unions are not part of the AFL-CIO and, as a result, have their own ground games as well.
According to NPR, the SEIU is one of those unions having “set a goal of knocking on a million doors in the final four days of the election alone.”
The SEIU appears to be running its GOTV both independently, as well as with several other public sector unions.
Athough the National Education Association (NEA) is also not part of the AFL-CIO, NEA President Becky Pringle—along with April Verrett of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Randi Weingarten of the AFT, and Lee Saunders of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME)—announced a “coordinated, multi-state voter outreach initiative to turn out voters in support of Harris-Walz in key battleground states.”
“Each union has invested significantly in GOTV programs and media outreach,” the NEA announced in October, “across TV and streaming platforms to support the Harris-Walz ticket and worker-friendly candidates in House, Senate, gubernatorial, and other down-ballot races.”
In the West, unions like UNITE-HERE are sending members from California (a Harris-Walz state) to the swing states of Arizona and Nevada.
The Republican Groundgame (or lack thereof)…
Despite individual efforts from groups ran by Scott Presler and Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point Action, Republican GOTV has been MIA in this election cycle, as well as prior election cycles.
Compare tens of thousands of union ‘volunteers,’ to this…
As PaydayReport’s Mike Elk noted on Monday:
Earlier today, the Harris-Walz Campaign announced they had knocked on 805,000 doors in Pennsylvania on Saturday alone. This number does not include doors knocked by unions and other independent groups working to elect the Harris-Walz ticket.
However, Western PA political observers have yet to observe any significant ground game by the Trump team.
…
Key GOP counties like Westmoreland County, which has a population of 350,000, went for Trump by a margin of 64%-35% in 2020.
However, neither the Trump campaign nor any of its Super PACs have a field office in Westmoreland. By all accounts, Pennsylvania will be decided by whoever can turn out the most votes.
If, per chance, Trump were to win, it will likely be more attributable to individual turnout than any organized ground game from the GOP and its allies.
Were Trump to lose, however, the GOP and its media pundits and consultants may want to look in the mirror and their own GOTV shortcomings.
