The Decline of Unionization and Republican Electoral Success in the Rust Belt

Abstract

This project discusses how blue-collar voters in the United States have shifted from voting for Democratic candidates to Republican candidates. The central hypothesis is that due to the fragmentation of the New Deal coalition within the Democratic party and declining union membership in the rust belt and other areas, blue-collar workers felt alienated by the Democratic party. Due to the disconnect between blue-collar voters and the Democratic party, the Republican Party gained support by appealing to the shared socially conservative biases held by both the white working class and the Republican Party. 

This project will rely on implications such as: when union membership declines on the state level, as Republicans increase their statewide vote shares, white working-class voters will defect from the Democratic party, when Republicans prioritize social issues, they will gain support amongst white working-class voters, and even as the New Deal coalition fragments, African-American voters will still support the Democratic party. The research will primarily focus on states in the rust belt and midwest, including: Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. Those states have been chosen because they have large blue-collar populations and due to blue-collar voters shifting from Democrat to Republican, they have begun electing Republicans at higher rates since 1996.  For sources this project will rely on union membership data by state from 1964-2018 and statewide election results from 1976-2020. This project will also use articles relating to this topic as secondary sources. 

This topic is important because it gives an idea of how union-based politics have declined and how the lack of workplace solidarity can be attributed to why politics tends to revolve around social issues.