About seven in 10 Americans say they approve of labor unions, just points away from the record-high approval rating for organized labor, according to a new Gallup poll.
The Gallup survey, released Monday, found 70 percent of Americans approve of labor unions, while 23 percent disapprove and 7 percent have no opinion. This is just one point shy of the 71-percent reading in 2022, which marked the highest approval rating since 1965.
Gallup first began measuring the public’s approval of labor unions in 1936 and the highest support of 75 percent was observed in the 1950s. Union approval has only dropped below 50 percent once, to 48 percent in 2009 following the Great Recession, the pollster said.
Approval of labor unions varies across party lines, with Democrats showing more support than Republicans, while independents fall in the middle of the two groups.
About 94 percent of Democrats approve of labor unions, up six points from last year. Meanwhile, 49 percent of Republicans and 67 percent of independents said the same, per Gallup.
The poll was taken Aug. 1-20, almost entirely between the Republican and Democratic National Conventions, which both had labor union speakers.
Both major party candidates, Vice President Harris and former President Trump, have spent time on the campaign trail looking to court union voters ahead of November.
The poll also found Americans are more likely to say the Democratic Party best serves labor union members over the Republican Party, following a decades-long trend.
The latest numbers show 62 percent chose the Democratic Party as best serving labor unions, while the 27 percent chose the Republican Party.
Harris received support from several major organized labor groups after becoming the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee, including the United Auto Workers (UAW). The union’s president, Shawn Fain, cited Harris’s “track record” with workers.
In a memo released last month, the Harris campaign argued union workers would be a key part of the Democratic ticket’s success in November. The memo, obtained first by The Hill, showcased Harris and President Biden’s record of support for organized labor.
Harris has sought to contrast herself from Trump, who has insisted union members will back his campaign even in the wake of a public feud with Fain, who has called him a “scab.”
Trump has sought to slam Harris on the economy in a bid to shore up union support. His allies have contended that taking away even some of Biden’s support among organized labor could make a difference in the race. The former president lost union members by 14 percentage points in 2020 against Biden.
The Gallup poll was taken using telephone interviews from Aug. 1-20 with a random sample of 1,015 adults, ages 18 and older living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 4 percentage points at the 95 percent confidence level.
