From the bargaining table to the ballot box: political effects of right to work laws
Files
First author draft
Date
2018
DOI
Authors
Feigenbaum, James
Hertel-Fernandez, Alexander
Williamson, Vanessa
Version
OA Version
Citation
J Feigenbaum, A Hertel-Fernandez, V Williamson. 2018. "From the Bargaining Table to the Ballot Box: Political Effects of Right to Work Laws."
Abstract
Labor unions play a central role in the Democratic party coalition, providing candidates with
voters, volunteers, and contributions, as well as lobbying policymakers. Has the sustained decline
of organized labor hurt Democrats in elections and shifted public policy? We use the enactment
of right-to-work laws—which weaken unions by removing agency shop protections—to estimate
the effect of unions on politics from 1980 to 2016. Comparing counties on either side of a state
and right-to-work border to causally identify the effects of the state laws, we find that right-towork
laws reduce Democratic Presidential vote shares by 3.5 percentage points. We find similar
effects in US Senate, US House, and Gubernatorial races, as well as on state legislative control.
Turnout is also 2 to 3 percentage points lower in right-to-work counties after those laws pass. We
next explore the mechanisms behind these effects, finding that right-to-work laws dampen
organized labor campaign contributions to Democrats and that potential Democratic voters are
less likely to be contacted to vote in right-to-work states. The weakening of unions also has large
downstream effects both on who runs for office and on state legislative policy. Fewer working
class candidates serve in state legislatures and Congress, and state policy moves in a more
conservative direction following the passage of right-to-work laws.
Description
License
© 2018 by James Feigenbaum, Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, and Vanessa Williamson. All rights
reserved. Short sections of text, not to exceed two paragraphs, may be quoted without explicit
permission provided that full credit, including © notice, is given to the source.