Short on Time, Harris’s Labor Allies Sprint to Reach Working-Class Voters

Unions and their affiliates think they can still break through with the Democrats’ worst demographic, white working-class voters, by hustling on the ground. But it has been a slog.

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Zaeveona Rainey, 25, a canvasser and crew chief for Working America, speaking with a voter in Coraopolis, Pa.

Vice President Kamala Harris’s allies in organized labor have begun a late drive to help her with white working-class voters, her weakest demographic, in the face of great skepticism over inflation, old grudges about free trade, new ones about student-loan forgiveness, and a profound blue-collar affinity for Donald J. Trump.

Working America, a political affiliate of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. built to reach nonunion workers, has around 1,600 paid canvassers knocking on doors in the battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin on any given day — just one part of a concerted effort by organized labor to eat into Mr. Trump’s advantage and deliver a Democratic victory through sheer hustle.

“We are the difference-makers in the election,” said Liz Shuler, president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., the nation’s largest federation of unions.

But beneath the bravado is realism.

For Ms. Harris, there is no sugarcoating her numbers with white working-class voters. Earlier this month, a poll of Pennsylvania by The New York Times, Siena College and The Philadelphia Inquirer found the vice president leading Mr. Trump overall, 50 percent to 47 percent. But Mr. Trump led by seven percentage points among likely voters without a college degree.

Among white voters without a college degree, that gap grew to a chasm: 58 percent favored Mr. Trump, 40 percent Ms. Harris. By a wide margin, 57 percent to 41 percent, college-educated voters said Ms. Harris would be better than Mr. Trump at helping the working class. But if educational attainment is a stand-in for class, the white working class trusts Mr. Trump; 56 percent say he would help them best, compared with 41 percent who say that about the vice president.

April Verrett, president of the Service Employees International Union, said Democratic hand-wringing over a slight slippage of support among Black men misses the real problem.

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