Some revelations from “Poll: Working-class voters prefer progressives, moderate Republicans” by Zamoine Perez at Public News Service: at “Working-class Virginians are still up for grabs in this year’s midterm elections, according to a new poll from Politico…More than half of voters believe politicians are just trying to get their votes when they campaign on helping the working class. Both political parties struggle with Americans who identify as working-class, with 38% saying Democrats best represent them compared to 32% saying Republicans do…Kayla Mock, secretary-treasurer of the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 400, said the results show politicians have a lot of work to do to make working-class voters feel visible…”They don’t feel heard. They don’t feel listened to by candidates. They feel talked at by politicians but not heard and then they certainly don’t feel politicians are taking action to actually address their issues,” Mock explained. “It’s a lot of talk with no substance.”…The results come as Republicans work to solidify inroads the party made with working-class voters in 2024, particularly Black and Latino voters, while establishment and progressive Democrats struggle over which political direction the party should go in appealing to voters…Despite the lack of trust of politicians, the poll noted progressive Democrats and moderate Republicans received the highest marks of trust to represent working-class voters, at 21% and 18%, respectively…Mock pointed out the results were not surprising, as both camps tend to have consistent economic messaging to the working-class voting bloc…”You see a lot of young progressive Democrats starting to win talking about those economic issues. I think moderate Republicans are also talking about those issues in a very different way. You have these not radical Republicans who are focusing more on economic and not social issues,” Mock observed…Only one in four Americans who identify as working-class believe politicians genuinely want to help them.”

One of  five charts from “Voters Define ‘Working Class’ by Workforce Participation, Economic Situation, and Job Type — Not Education” at Data for Progress:

From “Everyone wants to win working-class voters. But have they realized many are women?” by Chabeli Carrazana at The 19th: “It’s a group that is more diverse now than it’s ever been. Gone are the days when the only image of a working-class voter was a blue-collar White man who works in a factory and drives a truck, though that is still who politicians often pander to…Political messaging that speaks to the everyday needs of the diversifying working class could recapture the interest of the group, which has long been disillusioned by political candidates who don’t actually understand them…Definitions of what makes a working-class voter differ depending on who you ask. If it’s education — those who have less than a bachelor’s degree — then nearly half of the working class is women; in parts of the country, most of them are also people of color, said Valerie Wilson, a labor economist at the Economic Policy Institute who has studied working-class people. If working-class voters are those working low-wage jobs, then they are already majority women, who occupy two-thirds of the 40 lowest-paid occupations…Trump indeed has not delivered on many of his economic promises. His second term has been dominated by war in Iran and aggressive tariff policies that have driven up prices rather than balanced trade, as he promised. That has eroded Trump’s advantage with his strongest working class supporters, White people, who now disapprove of his handling of the economy…The evidence is in the gender pay gap: After years of shrinking, the gap actually widened over the past two years for the first time since the 1960s. ” More here.

From “Republicans are attacking unions at exactly the wrong time” by Andrew Mangan at Daily Kos: “The GOP seems to think that attacking labor unions is a winning strategy ahead of this year’s midterm elections, but new data shows that even fewer Americans are likely to be on their side…Republicans on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce escalating investigationsinto many major unions, including the American Federation of Teachers and United Auto Workers, over claims that union dues are illegally being used to directly support Democratic candidates and causes…But this fight is heating up at a bad time for the GOP, with Americans’ approval of labor unions now near an all-time high…Seventy-one percent of Americans approve of unions, according to new Gallup data. That matches the level of support seen in 2022, though before that, approval hadn’t hit 71% since May 1965…More impressive, though, may be the firm’s finding that 47% of Americans now want labor unions to have more influence in the United States—an all-time high since Gallup first asked the question in 1999. And the share that wants unions to have less influence has hit a new low of 23%…The second Trump administration has also laid waste to the federal workforce, much of which is unionized, by firing thousands of civil servants, persuading them to resign, or eroding their workplace protections. As a result, the administration has often found itself being sued by unions, such as the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents 820,000 U.S. government workers…Despite all of that, union membership in the nation actually grew last year. A February analysis from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute found that 16.5 million U.S. workers were represented by a union in 2025, marking the highest level in 16 years. This follows many years of declining union membership among both public- and private-sector employees.” More here.