voting

Walker Awakens a Sleeping Giant

The use of a legislative maneuver last night by Republicans in the Wisconsin Senate to advance Governor Scott Walker's efforts to strip state employees of their collective bargaining rights may have caught Democrats by surprise, but the ultimate result of the actions of Walker and his GOP allies may have been to awaken a sleeping giant.

For the first time in decades, driven by the emergence of the Millennial Generation, the nation's youngest politically active generation (born 1982-2003), the public is as positive about labor unions as it is about business corporations. Pew research findings show that, in the private sector, Millennials side with unions over business in disputes by 51% to 37% and, in the public sector, favor unions over government by a 56% to 32%. These attitudes are reflected in recent surveys showing that both within Wisconsin and across the nation Americans favor the public employee unions in their dispute with the governor. In fact, largely due to defections from Republican union members, one recent survey suggested that Walker would lose a reelection vote to his 2010 Democratic opponent if a new election were to be held today.

In a recent Pew survey, nearly equal numbers of Americans were favorable toward labor (45%) and business (47%). This is in sharp contrast to the Reagan-Gingrich era of the 1980s and 1990s when the public was more positive about business than about labor by margins of around 15 percentage points. The Millennial Generation accounts for almost all of the narrowing of this gap. Millennials are positive about labor unions by a 2:1 margin (58% favorable to 29% unfavorable). The young cohort is far less positive about business corporations (49% favorable to 43% unfavorable). Although in the wake of the Great Recession, older generations are less positive toward business than they were a decade or two ago, they are still narrowly more favorable toward corporations (46% each favorable and unfavorable) than toward labor (42% favorable to 44% unfavorable).

The Millennials' endorsement of labor unions does not simply stem from a supposed tendency of young people to always support the underdog or liberal causes. Back in the 1980s and 1990s, youthful members of the individualistic and entrepreneurial Generation X (born 1965-1981), and a key Ronald Reagan support group, usually tilted toward management in its disputes with labor. Rather, the Millennial Generation has positive impressions of labor unions because it is what generational theorists have labeled a "civic generation." Civic generations, like the Millennials and the GI or Greatest Generation are characterized by their group-orientation, their tendency to build, reform, and utilize societal institutions, and their belief in cooperative approaches to accomplish their own and the nation's goals.

At around 95 million, the Millennial Generation is the largest in U.S. history, but its full force has yet to be felt. In 2008, when Millennials preferred Barack Obama over John McCain by a 66% to 32% margin and accounted for 80% of the president's popular vote margin, they comprised less than one fifth (17%) of the electorate. In 2012, when Obama runs for reelection, Millennials will account for about a quarter (24%) of those eligible to vote. In 2020, when the youngest Millennials reach voting age the generation will comprise more than a third (36%) of American adults.

As we point out in our upcoming book, Millennial Momentum: How a New Generation is Remaking America, with numbers like these the emerging generation is about to reshape all aspects of national life, including the relative positions of labor and management in the U.S. economy and American politics. The last time a civic generation so thoroughly dominated American society, as the Millennials are about to, was in the 1930s when the GI Generation, whose numbers were equal to those of the two preceding generations combined, spearheaded labor's drive to organize the nation's industrial workforce. They were so successful that more than a third of all American workers were union members by the mid-1950s. In the decades after it fought and defeated the Axis in World War II, the GI Generation assumed positions of power and thoroughly shaped the nation's institutions, just as Millennials will do in the years to come.

In the Millennial era that lays ahead, public opinion and governmental policy will be more sympathetic to labor than they have been at any time since the GI Generation ran things. Given the preference of many Millennials for public and governmental service, public employee unions should find fertile ground for organizing and for maintaining public support for a level playing field between workers and employers. That is why Governor Walker's battle in Wisconsin and similar efforts in other states over the ability of workers to organize are likely, in the end, to fail and why the decades ahead are likely to be better for organized labor than the previous few decades have been.

- Cross posted from The Huffington Post

The Radical Right's War on Voting: An Opportunity in Disguise?

First, they sought to divide us by legal status.  Next, they came for the teachers and the nurses.  Recently, they attempted to drive a wedge between African-Americans and Hispanics by erroneously tying minority unemployment rates to illegal immigration.   Now the Radical Right is taking their war against American values one step further by introducing and passing state-based legislation that will make it harder (and in some cases, impossible) for emerging communities to vote.

A new piece in today's Washington Post details various efforts to limit voting rights.  From legislation in New Hampshire that would make it harder for young people to vote, to legislation in North Carolina that would require a state-issued ID and make it harder for many groups to vote, the 21st Century coalition is under attack.  While there have been various assaults on the American way, this is the first to attack Millennials, African-Americans, Latinos and women in such equal measure.     

The consequences of the legislation are grave - both at an electoral and a civic level. But this coordinated campaign also offers an opportunity to re-unify and invigorate this growing majority, a chance to join together and fight to make it easier to vote, not harder. 

 

The Hispanic Vote and the Threat of the "Time Tax"

NDN's long-held analysis on the significance of the Hispanic vote is now common knowledge, as further evidenced by Chuck Todd's report, but an important challenge remains in the less than 150 hours until Election Day - the only way the potential of the Hispanic vote, and all registered voters, will translate to an electoral reality is by ensuring that all precincts have the capacity to handle a 90-98% turnout based on 2008 registration numbers. Actual turnout will depend on: 1) making sure people understand how to vote, and 2) access to the polls.

During early voting, some states have already far exceeded turnout from 2004: in Georgia, early voting is already at 180 percent of its 2004 total, Louisiana (169 percent), and North Carolina (129 percent) - all states with large minority populations. Precincts should be prepared to handle twice the number of voters from 2004. We shoud be wary when precincts report that they are prepared for 90% turnout, as opposed to 80% from 2004 - they should have enough machines and/or paper ballots to accomodate the number of all registered voters in 2008, not just enough for a fraction of registered voters based on 2004 numbers.

Florida, with an estimated 12% of Hispanic voters, has already declared an emergency and extended voting hours to 12 hours a day as a result of voter turnout - this with only about 10%, or 1.2 million of registered voters statewide having voted as of Monday. In Georgia,some people waited for eight hours at the polls. By Tuesday the lines were down to "just" four hours, so the GA Democratic Party Chair, Jane Kidd, urged the Secretary of State to keep the polls open: "today, it is clear that we are in a crisis, and it is unclear even if there is enough time for the remaining four million-plus Georgia voters to cast their votes in an efficient and timely manner." By the way, GA state law doesn't provide for weekend voting and prohibits voting on the Monday before Election Day.

In Virginia, a state that's now a "tossup," we're already seeing voting problems thanks to everything from phony fliers stating the wrong date for Election Day, to alleged "gerrymandering" of voting equipment. A lawsuit has been filed against the state of VA charging that some primarily minority neighborhoods are allotted a lesser number of voting machines per person as compared to other areas, leading to longer lines and arguing that this constitutes a "time tax" on the right to vote, as some voters might give up and go home. Voting problems would disproportionately hurt the Democratic Party and Sen. Barack Obama. According to the new ABC/Washington Post poll, during early voting Sen. Obama picked up 60 percent of the vote, to John McCain's 39 percent. According to Gallup, between Oct. 17 and Oct. 27, early voters turned out 53% for Obama over 43% for McCain.

In the meantime, candidates continue to push early voting, as seen in the Obama ad below. Luckily there is also a push for instructional videos on how to vote, in English and in Spanish:

 

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