The Impact of Declining Union Membership on Voter

Oren M. Levin-Waldman
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Oren M. Levin-Waldman: The Jerome Levy Economics Institute

Macroeconomics from EconWPA

Abstract: Much has been written on realigning elections and whether or not the general model has any contemporary relevance. Discussions of the last great realignment -- the New deal realignment of the 1930s -- often emphasize the broad coalition of interests which brought it about. Although organized labor was an important interest, there is very little in the current literature on the influence of organized labor institutions on both party identification and voting behavior. Using data from the National Election Studies, this paper examines the voting behavior of working individuals who are specifically union members over a forty year period. What the data shows is that as union members are more likely to vote than non-union members, the decline in unionism has effectively resulted in a disfranchisement among many who traditionally would have voted for the Democratic party.

JEL-codes: E (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1997-12-09
Note: Type of Document - Acrobat PDF; prepared on IBM PC; to print on PostScript; pages: 31; figures: included
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Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wpa:wuwpma:9712001

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