Swing shift Can workers' gains lift Biden's poll fortunes?

David Coxistryingtopersuade his union members that Joe Biden has done more for working-class Americans than any president he has seen in his decades as a construction worker and organiser in eastern Ohio.

- Chris McGreal 

But Cox is not sure they really want to hear it. The Democratic brand was in decline here long before Donald Trump won Ohio in 2016 and then increased his support in 2020.

"Biden's been great. He's done so much for labour like we haven't never seen in my lifetime," he said, citing legislation to revitalise manufacturing, the new jobs those changes created, as well as labour department decisions in favour of workers.

"But whether it brings back those we lost to Trump remains to be seen." Cox, an ironworker and director of the Dayton Building and Construction Trades Council, a union umbrella group representing thousands of construction workers in eastern Ohio, has good reason for scepticism.

Ohio was once a crucial swing state but, by 2020, the Democratic national funders decided it wasn't worth throwing serious money into the fight and left Ohio off their list of targets, essentially conceding the state to Trump and the Republicans.

The only Democrat to win statewide office in more than a decade is US Senator Sherrod Brown, who is expected to face a tough fight for re-election.