Before yours truly goes out to the picket lines for the Writers Guild of America (Time Warner Center Noon-2 p.m. for those of you in NYC…and, who knows, maybe this will be one of the last picket lines of the strike if the deal being discussed among the members this weekend passes muster), I decided to take a look back at where the union vote went on Super Tuesday.

    According to the exit polls that were conducted by Edison Media Research, union voters made up 30 percent of the vote on ST. Overall, Sen. Clinton won 51 percent of the union vote, Sen. Obama 44 percent. I’m going to guess that the other five percent went to John Edwards who had–and continues to have–a passionate following within organized labor.

    What’s most interesting about that number is this: Sen. Obama has no national union endorsements [Correction: I goofed–forgot that UNITEHERE endorsed Obama prior to the Nevada caucuses, Transport Workers Union moved from Edwards to Obama and he also has the support of the United Association of Plumbers & Pipefitters], though he has received local affiliate support; for example, he nabbed the SEIU State Council in California, which switched to Obama when Edwards dropped out. You can look at this in two related ways. First, the official endorsements of unions don’t carry as much weight as one would assume among rank-and-file members. Second, that Sen. Obama is viewed pretty favorably among  union members; I’m going to guess that particularly among unions with large African-American memberships (unions such as AFSCME and SEIU) Sen. Obama did very well, simply reflecting his huge support among African American men and women (85 percent and 80 percent, respectively) across the overall primary electorate.

  The percent of union households as a percent of voters is in parenthesis and I’ve left out the percentages won by Edwards (which ranged from 1-5 percent). For reasons that I’m not clear on, there were no exit polls done for the other Super Tuesday states not listed below. And, of course, one has to take exit polls with the caveat that they certainly are not gospel.

  Alabama (27)

     Obama: 51

     Clinton: 46

  Arizona (16)

    Clinton: 57

    Obama: 37

  Arkansas (15)

    Clinton: 69

    Obama: 29

   California (20)

    Clinton: 53

    Obama: 41

   Connecticut (33)

    Clinton: 49

    Obama: 48

   Delaware (38)

     Clinton: 48

     Obama: 47

   Georgia (13)

     Obama (67)

     Clinton (32)

   Masschusetts (27)

    Clinton (60)

    Obama (35)

   Missouri (27)

     Clinton: 58

     Obama: 39

   New Jersey (35)

     Clinton: 52

     Obama: 46

  New Mexico (22)

     Clinton: 58

     Obama: 40

  Oklahoma (16)

     Clinton: 57

     Obama: 30

   Tennessee (19)

     Clinton: 55

     Obama: 41

   Utah: (14)

     Obama: 43

     Clinton: 40

   The bottom line. There were state-by-state differences. There was the home-court advantage. In New York, 40 percent of the voters were from union households. Sen Clinton received 60 percent of those voters, Sen Obama 37 percent, which reflects Clinton’s home-state name recognition and large union institutional support. On the other hand, in Illinois, where union households made up 38 percent of the Democratic primary electorate, Sen. Obama won his home-state union households in a big way: 63 percent to 35 percent.

    If you take out race as a factor, union members don’t seem to skew that widely from the electorate at large in terms of how they voted, within a point or two maybe. California, for example, the actual vote as a whole had Clinton winning 52-42, and she won the union vote by essentially the same margin. Connecticut was a very close victory for Obama 51-47, and the union vote was close there, too. Where Obama won big in Georgia (overall margin was 66-31), he won the union vote virtually by the same margin.

   Where there were bigger differences in the union vote compared to the overall Democratic electorate, race played a big factor. The Missouri race was a razor thin victory for Obama but Clinton won the union vote by a big margin (58-39). I’m going to guess that there was a close correlation to the fact that she also won the non-Hispanic white vote by 62-35. And in Mexico, where the final number is not known but Clinton leads by a razor-thin margin, she won the union vote by a large margin–and she also won the Hispanic vote by 65-33.

    So, what does this mean? For one, the union leaders who didn’t endorse any candidate in the primary probably know that their members are not choosing one candidate over the other in some overwhelming fashion. Except where race is a factor. And, let’s face it, race, within unions, is something that is a big issue–something that most union leaders don’t want to talk about. It strikes me that, perhaps, like the country as a whole, this election cries out for a more open, honest dialogue about race within the labor movement.

    What do you notice about the vote that I missed? Or where do you disagree?