NYT: Labor Leaders: We Did It

[Omaha Steve]

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/05/labor-leaders-we-did-it/

November 5, 2008, 5:06 pm
Labor Leaders: We Did It
By Steven Greenhouse

WASHINGTON — On the day after, the leaders of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. stopped short of boasting that all their leafleting, phone banking and door knocking delivered the election to Barack Obama. But the federation’s leaders did say that the nation’s unions played an important role in his victory and made the difference in several key battleground states, most notably Ohio.

At a news conference at the labor federation’s headquarters in Washington, its leaders announced that union members voted 67 percent for Mr. Obama and 30 percent for John McCain, according to an exit poll of 1,500 union members by Peter D. Hart Research Associates. According to nationwide exit polls, 51 percent of nonunion voters backed Mr. Obama, while 47 percent voted for Mr. McCain.

Both the A.F.L.-C.I.O. and Change to Win, the rival labor federation, say they made all-out efforts on Mr. Obama’s behalf, both to reverse the nation’s economic direction and to elect someone who supports unions and might help them grow.

“Today is one of the brightest days for working people all across our nation,” said John J. Sweeney, president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., a grouping of 56 unions representing 10 million workers. “Voters have delivered a resounding mandate for broad-based economic change.”

Mr. Sweeney said that in the last four days of the campaign, 250,000 volunteers from A.F.L.-C.I.O. unions made 5.5 million phone calls and visited 3.9 million union households. All told, he said, unions reached out to more than 13 million voters in 24 states during the campaign, with some undecided union members being contacted more than 25 times through phone calls, household visits and workplace conversations with co-workers who backed Mr. Obama.

As a result of those efforts, union leaders said, Mr. Obama ran up a bigger margin with union members than Senator John Kerry did in 2004, when 65 percent of union members backed him compared with 35 percent backing President Bush.

FULL story at link.