A dozen candidates for the Democratic presidential primary will debate on Tuesday in Westerville, Ohio. They will go back and forth on whether policies should be centrist or progressive and how much to talk about President Trump in an effort to balance appeals to primary voters now and a broader coalition later.
But the Ohio voters who are up for grabs aren’t thinking about left or right. They’re focused on solving the problems plaguing their families right now. Their lives are precarious, and most don’t think anyone in politics has their back.
At Working America, the labor movement’s field organizing arm, we have been reaching out to people who don’t have a union on the job in Ohio since 2003. Last week, we completed 1,031 interviews of working-class voters in the state. We’ve engaged these voters over the past four years through face-to-face conversations and online surveys so we can assess trends like what voters care about, why and what it means for 2020.
Almost one-third of these people are unsure about who they will vote for in 2020, including some voters who went for Donald Trump in 2016 but are now wavering.
What we’ve found is that when candidates focus on bread-and-butter issues, they are on the right track. Our undecided group ranked as their top issue jobs and the income gap, followed by health care and Social Security. Strong Democrats and strong Trump supporters also ranked jobs and health care as top priorities, but Democrats cited climate change as their third most important issue while Trump supporters were concerned about immigration. Even low unemployment doesn’t shake voters’ fears about jobs.
