According to the 2016 exit polls, people over 65 preferred Trump over Clinton 52-45. Frankly, I’m a little surprised it wasn’t worse. I think I assumed that Trump won that group by double digits. But lately we are seeing a number of polls showing Trump is losing that group.
Robert Griffin and John Sides of the Washington Post’s Monkey Cage point out that it isn’t just the coronavirus that’s causing this, as we all assume.
Trump’s apparent problems with seniors started well before the coronavirus outbreak. Surveys show Biden has been beating Trump among seniors for months. Here’s how we know.
This is clear in data from the Democracy Fund + UCLA Nationscape project, which has conducted large surveys of more than 6,000 people each week since July 2019. Those surveys have consistently asked whether people would vote for Trump or Biden in a general election matchup. The figure below shows how Biden has polled against Trump among registered voters in four different age groups:
Since July, the margin between Trump and Biden has clearly tightened among voters under 45. This has brought Biden’s lead among both groups in line with Clinton’s lead in 2016. Biden’s current lead among 18- to 29-year-olds is 19 points, according to the trendline in the graph that averages the weekly polls. Clinton’s lead was 18 points according to the 2016 exit polls. Biden’s seven-point lead among 30- to 44-year-olds matches Clinton’s eight-point lead.
But among voters over 45, including seniors, very little has changed since July. Biden’s lead among 45- to 64-year-olds was 10 points in July and is eight points now — substantially better than Clinton’s nine-point deficit.
Biden’s lead among seniors has also been a fairly consistent four to eight points over the past 10 months. It may have increased a few points in the most recent weeks, but this only brought it back to where it was in July.
Biden’s lead among seniors isn’t an “anybody but Trump” phenomenon. Nationscape has also consistently asked about a matchup between Bernie Sanders and Trump. Compared to Biden, Sanders has performed about six to eight points worse among seniors when matched against Trump. He does better than Biden only among the younger voters who have typically supported the Vermont senator more.
Of course, those who are seniors today include some who were not in 2016. Is this why Biden is doing better? No. Among those who were at least 65 years old in 2016 (that is, those 69 or older today), Biden is leading by eight points.
In short, Trump’s struggles among seniors — and Biden’s appeal — appear to predate the coronavirus outbreak by a long time.
What could be going on here? The fact that Biden himself is a senior doesn’t seem to explain anything. After all, so are Trump and Sanders.
Another potential explanation is gender: Perhaps Biden appeals to seniors more than Clinton did because of sexist attitudes. Nationscape asks several questions that gauge respondents’ views about gender, including attitudes on sexual harassment, comfort with having a female boss, perceptions of the ability of men and women to think logically, and whether increased opportunities for women have improved society.
But while seniors are more likely than younger Americans to express negative gender attitudes, Biden does better than Clinton among seniors regardless of their gender attitudes.
A third explanation is Biden is perceived to be less liberal than Clinton, which would help him particularly among seniors, who are more likely to identify as conservative than liberal. There is some evidence for this.
In a May 2016 YouGov poll, 68 percent of seniors said Clinton was liberal or very liberal, 27 percent said she was moderate, eight percent said she was conservative or very conservative, and seven percent did not know.
In the most recent Nationscape poll, 56 percent of seniors said Biden was liberal or very liberal, 22 percent said he was moderate, eight percent said he was conservative, and 14 percent did not know. So it is possible Biden benefits from perceived as less liberal. Biden is winning seniors except those who think he is “very liberal.” But we cannot determine whether perceptions of ideology are actually causing seniors to support him.
Regardless of the reason, the unusual feature of the 2020 campaign thus far is that it is “flattening the curve” — that is, the age curve that has characterized voting in the past few presidential elections. Although the last three elections have featured notable divides between different age groups, the unusually high support for Biden among those over 45 has substantially reduced those differences.
They don’t break it down here, but polling shows a major gender gap with senior women supporting Biden in much greater numbers than men.
My guess is that older people, including women, didn’t like Clinton because they formed their opinions of her a long time ago and see her as a feminist, which they just don’t like, even if they are generally liberal themselves.
And I suspect that the senior women who are defecting from Trump are not as pleased with his crude narcissism, insults and undignified behavior as some of his younger fans. Of course, all of that was on full display in the 2016 campaign but I think plenty of people assumed that he would become more presidential once in office.
But whatever their issues, it appears that they are much happier with an older, white male moderate Democrat than they were with Obama or Clinton. Surprise. I suspect that this is what was in the Democratic primary electorate’s collective subconscious when they chose Biden as much as anything.
(Apropos of nothing, looking at these graphs, I have to wonder what’s happening with the 30-44 year olds? At this point in time fewer of them say they’re going to vote Dem than the seniors. Huh?)