CNN data reporter Harry Enten admitted that Vice President Kamala Harris has the "worst" support among union households for a Democratic presidential candidate "in a generation," while Donald Trump is "doing very, very well" with the historically Democratic voting block.
"You know, you go back to 1992, Bill Clinton won that union vote by 30 points, and Hillary Clinton only won it by 12 points back in 2016," Enten told CNN host Sara Sidner on Monday. "But look at where Kamala Harris is today. She’s only leading by 9 points. That would be the worst Democratic performance in a generation, 10 points off the mark of Joe Biden."
The polling comes just one day before the International Longshoremen’s Association union is set to strike across all Atlantic and Gulf Coast ports from Maine to Texas. Port and business leaders blamed the Biden-Harris administration’s lack of leadership for the strike, which is expected to have detrimental effects on America’s supply chain and cost the economy about $5 billion a day, according to a JP Morgan analysis.
Former president Trump is "doing very, very well" among working-class voters as well as with other demographics that have previously voted for Democratic presidents, Enten said.
"And this is part of a larger trend that we’re seeing throughout our politics in which Republicans, specifically Donald Trump, is doing very, very well among working-class voters, whether they were in unions, whether they went to trade school, or whether they’re voters of color," Enten added.
Trump has more working class support than any GOP presidential candidate in a generation. He's on track for the best performance among union voters in 40 years. He's up 31 points among trade school grads.
He's doing 17 pts better among nonwhite non-college voters than in 2020. pic.twitter.com/0ObrWWNzYf
— (((Harry Enten))) (@ForecasterEnten) September 30, 2024
Earlier this month, Harris became the first Democratic presidential nominee not to receive the Teamsters endorsement in nearly 30 years. The union declined to back a candidate after a strong majority—59.6 to 34 percent—of its rank-and-file members voted to endorse Trump. The Teamsters, one of the country's largest unions, has historically supported Democratic candidates for president.
Trump holds a 31-point advantage over Harris among vocational and trade school graduates. In 1992 pre-election polling, Bill Clinton led that vote over George H.W. Bush by 7 points.
"That has moved from being a core Democratic group to now being a core group of Donald Trump’s massive amount of support among the working class," the CNN reporter noted.
Harris has also been polling worse among "non-college voters of color" than Democrats have in previous elections, while Trump has gained support within that demographic, according to CNN.
"Joe Biden won that group by 45 points. Look at where Kamala Harris’s support is today. She’s still leading amongst that group, but that lead is down ... to just 28 points," Enten said.
"The fact is Donald Trump seems to have gone into a hotbed of traditional Democratic support and made a lot of movement in ways I don’t think a lot of people would have thought when he went down that escalator just back in 2015."