• DOI:10.1007/s11109-020-09624-3
• Corpus ID: 220512676

Labor Unions and White Democratic Partisanship

@article{Macdonald2020LaborUA,
  title={Labor Unions and White Democratic Partisanship},
  author={David Macdonald},
  journal={Political Behavior},
  year={2020},
  volume={43},
  pages={859-879}
}

• D. Macdonald
• Published 25 June 2020
• Economics
• Political Behavior

The Democratic Party’s declining support among white voters is a defining feature of contemporary American politics. Extant research has emphasized factors such as elite polarization and demographic change but has overlooked another important trend, the decades-long decline of labor union membership. This oversight is surprising, given organized labor’s long ties to the Democratic Party. I argue that the concurrent decline of union membership and white support for the Democratic Party is not coincidental, but that labor union affiliation is an important determinant of whites’ partisan allegiances. I test this using several decades of cross-sectional and panel data. I show that union-affiliated whites are more likely to identify as Democrats, a substantively significant relationship that does not appear to be driven by self-selection. Overall, these findings underscore the political consequences of union decline and help us to better understand the drivers of declining white support for the Democratic Party.