"Economic trends have strained working families to the breaking point," Sweeney said. "Workers are not sharing in the wealth they helped create, and our nation's economic recovery has not been a recovery for workers at all."
The role of labor unions in Democratic turnout has been somewhat exaggerated in past elections, said Charles Cook, a nonpartisan political analyst who publishes the Cook Political Report. Moreover, Cook predicted that no matter which party was better organized, the critical factor would not be how many voters went to the polls, but how many voters did not.
"My hunch is that in this election, the bigger story is whether disillusioned Republicans stay home," Cook said. "I think Republicans are going to be faced with having a terrific organization and a disillusioned electorate."
Cook also noted that Democrats didn't seem as well organized as they were in the 2004 presidential election. For that campaign Democrats formed an umbrella group called America Coming Together to coordinate voter mobilization efforts. This time, there is no umbrella group and the labor and party efforts are directed independently.
"What they are doing is putting together a patchwork," Cook said.
Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said improved Democratic field operations for getting out the vote would help deliver control of Congress to his party. He noted that Republicans had been especially successful recently in the final days before the polls open, running "72-hour" operations to get out the vote.
"One of the ways that they have won elections at the last minute is in terms of field operations," Schumer told reporters this week. "We have planned a detailed field operation for the last year and a half in many of the battleground states."
Times staff writer Noam N. Levey contributed to this report.
