Where Kamala Harris, Donald Trump Stand Among Union Workers: What Polls Say

Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign ramped up its plea for union voters’ support in critical swing states on Monday as the 2024 election heads into its homestretch.
Both Harris and former President Donald Trump have claimed to be on the side of working Americans while vying for the White House, a reflection of the important role union voters could play in securing states like Pennsylvania and Michigan, which have some of the highest union densities in the country, according to the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
In a post to his Truth Social account Monday, Trump wished a happy Labor Day “to all of our American Workers who represent the Shining Example of Hard Work and Ingenuity” and blamed Harris for “High Gas Prices, Transportation Costs are up, and Grocery Prices are through the roof.”
Harris, meanwhile, spent the holiday on the campaign trail with labor leaders in Detroit and Pittsburgh, while her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, attended the Milwaukee Area Labor Council’s “Laborfest” in Wisconsin.
“Everywhere I go I tell people, ‘Look, you may not be a union member. You better thank a union member,'” Harris said to supporters gathered at Northwestern High School in Detroit. “For the five-day work week, you better thank a union member. For sick leave, you better thank a union. For paid leave, you better thank a union for vacation time.”
Republicans have made inroads with union members in recent election years, despite labor leadership consistently endorsing Democrats at the top of the ticket. Exit polling in 2016 found that union households supported then-Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton over Trump by only 8 points—in comparison, in the 2012 election, Democrats won union households by 18 points, per the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research at Cornell University.
President Joe Biden improved Democrats’ numbers among union households when he beat Trump in 2020, winning the voting block by 16 points, according to exit polls. But polling earlier this election season showed that Biden and Trump were nearly neck-and-neck for the union vote this fall, posing risks for Democrats in some key battleground states that Biden flipped by a narrow margin just four years prior.
Harris, however, has secured endorsements from some of the biggest unions in the U.S., including the United Auto Workers Union, the American Federal of Teachers and the National Education Association, all of which joined her on stage in Detroit, Michigan, on Monday, where the vice president again vowed to fight for union workers if elected to the Oval Office.
“We celebrate unions because unions helped build America, and unions helped build America’s middle class,” Harris told attendees.
Recent polling has also shown Harris reclaiming the Democrats’ lead with union voters. A survey from Emerson College released on August 16 found that the vice president was ahead of Trump by 14.8 percentage points among union voters in Pennsylvania (56.8 percent to 42 percent). Back in July, a similar poll found the former president leading union voters by 5 percentage points while Biden was still in the race.
Harris also received promising numbers out of Michigan in an Emerson College poll released late last week—while 30.1 percent of union households said they would vote for Harris if the election were held today, Trump trailed by double digits, earning 20 percent of the vote. The survey was based on the responses of 800 likely voters with a margin of error of 3.4 percent.
Despite the momentum, the race between Trump and Harris remains tight—RealClearPolling reports that Harris has just a 0.5 percent lead across polling in Pennsylvania, and is beating Trump on average by 1.1 percentage points in Michigan. As of Monday, the vice president was leading the race across national polls by 2.3 percent (47.1 percent to 44.8 percent), per RealClearPolling’s aggregate.
“Let’s not pay too much attention to the polls,” Harris told rally-goers in Detroit. “Let’s know, like labor always does, we are out here running like we are the underdog in this race because we know what we are fighting for.”
Biden is slated to join Harris in Pittsburgh later in the day Monday at the city’s Labor Day parade, alongside Pennsylvania Democrats Governor Josh Shapiro and Senator Bob Casey.
In a statement to Newsweek on Monday, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley dismissed Harris’ attempt to “try to win over union workers in Pennsylvania,” claiming that the vice president and the Biden administration “broke their promise to make life better for working class Americans.”
Whatley added, “President Trump kept his promise to strengthen America’s steel industry through tariffs that sparked new investments totaling nearly $15 billion, resulted in about 4,000 new jobs, and created or expanded more than 65 new domestic steel and aluminum projects. Manufacturing workers in Pennsylvania and all across the country were better off under President Trump, which is why they will vote to send him back to the White House in November.”
Update 09/2/24, 9:52 p.m. ET: This story has been updated with additional comment from RNC Chairman Michael Whatley.