Joe Biden, who has portrayed himself as the champion of blue-collar workers, may be in for a rude surprise: former President Donald Trump has garnered a substantial amount of donations from workers in typically unionized industries.
Bloomberg News analyzed Federal Election Commission data from the second half of 2023 and found that Trump is winning the lion’s share of donors who work at companies such as Walmart and Federal Express; he is also collecting substantial donations from workers at airline and shipping companies. Meanwhile, Biden’s “campaign lags Trump in contributions from donors with oft-unionized job titles including mechanics and truckers,” Bloomberg reported.
Three key swing states in 2024, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, contain large percentages of union workers in their voting blocs. Biden is clearly worried about Michigan, with its large Muslim bloc of voters, as he has been sending emissaries to speak to the Muslim population there. He himself has visited a UAW picket line there and various union halls.
Despite Biden implementing pro-union policies, Bloomberg notes that donors working for General Motors and Ford are roughly split between Trump and Biden.
Additionally, the powerful Teamsters Union, which has supported every Democratic presidential nominee since Al Gore in 2000, made its first substantial donation to the Republican Party in the last 20 years, giving the Republican National Committee $45,000.
In February 2021, one year after Trump left office, NBC News opined, “There are signs across racial and ethnic demographic groups that Republicans are becoming the party of blue-collar Americans and the change is happening quickly.” NBC News pointed out that in the previous decade, the percentage of Republican blue-collar voters increased 12 points while Democrat blue-collar workers declined eight points.
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Between 2010 and 2020, the percentage of Hispanic blue-collar workers grew 13%, while the percentage of black blue-collar workers grew 7%. “Most of the GOP’s blue-collar growth took place during the presidency of Trump,” NBC News noted.
“While working class voters harbor reservations about both political parties, they align more with Republicans than with Democrats on most of the matters that concern them,” William Galston, a former Clinton White House aide, acknowledged.