A post-election poll by the AFL-CIO shows that more Massachusetts union members voted for Republican Scott Brown than Democrat Martha Coakley in what the labor federation dubs a “working class revolt.”  Union voters, concluded the AFL-CIO, are dissatisfied at the slow pace of change and perceive Obama and Congress as doing too little to help the middle class.

Republican Scott Brown’s victory in the Massachusetts Senate race was lifted by strong support from union households, in a sign of trouble for President Barack Obama and Democrats who are counting on union support in the 2010 midterm elections.

A poll conducted on behalf of the AFL-CIO found that 49% of Massachusetts union households supported Mr. Brown in Tuesday’s voting, while 46% supported Democrat Martha Coakley. The poll conducted by Hart Research Associates surveyed 810 voters.

Let’s pull that out to be as clear as we can.  Margin by which union members voted in MA-Sen on Tuesday:

Scott Brown: 49%
Martha Coakley: 46%

Ouch.

Tula Connell wrote over at the front page of FDL yesterday about some of the other issues hit on by the poll, including the fact that voters across the board want to see more change, invalidating baseless concerns of “overreach” and calls to “move to the center.”

In fact, voters were not worried about Democratic “overreach”—47 percent said their bigger concern about Democrats is that they haven’t succeeded in making needed change rather than tried to make too many changes too quickly (32 percent). Even voters for Scott Brown were more concerned about a lack of change (50 percent) than about trying to make too many changes too quickly (43 percent).

These results puts a lie to the corporate media spin that Democrats have gone “too far” in pushing a reform agenda. [...]

Our polling results show the election was not an endorsement of a Republican agenda or a call to abandon health care reform. Voters strongly disapprove of the job being done by congressional Republicans (26 percent approve and 58 percent disapprove), a much lower rating than they give to congressional Democrats (37 percent approve and 51 percent disapprove).

It seems the DNC and Coakley’s campaign both made a failed assumption that union members would be there for Coakley no matter what; indeed, unions in the state weren’t called in til the last minute to start mobilizing their members.  As a result, otherwise persuadable members were left to their own devices and ended  up voting for Brown.  Sam Stein reports:

Democrats could have held the Massachusetts Senate seat if the AFL-CIO and others had been asked to mobilize voters sooner, suggest new polling numbers compiled by the union conglomerate.

Data points provided independently to the Huffington Post show that union voters in Massachusetts were 15 percentage points more likely to vote for Attorney General Martha Coakley if they simply had been asked. The problem was, unions weren’t really operating on the ground until the final days.

Problem is, what reason do unions have to mobilize their members?  The administration has done virtually nothing to help the labor movement aside from a handful of symbolic improvements that would be the least to expect after collectively spending a half billion dollars to elect Obama.

The AFL-CIO’s polling shows that the lessons to learn from the Massachusetts meltdown are twofold: one, Democrats must move to be more populist, and two, don’t count of unions and their members to be there for Democrats if they continue to get screwed by the Obama administration.