Pollster and analyst Ruy Texeira took a look at the senior citizen defection from the GOP fold in today’s New York Times:
[T]he Democrats have a secret weapon in 2020 on the other side of the age spectrum: senior voters. Among this age group — voters 65 and older — polls so far this year reveal a dramatic shift to the Democrats. That could be the most consequential political development of this election.
The bipartisan States of Change project estimates that Mrs. Clinton lost this group by around 15 points. By contrast, the nonpartisan Democracy Fund + U.C.L.A. Nationscape survey, which has collected over 108,000 interviews of registered voters since the beginning of the year, has Mr. Biden leading among seniors by about six points. We are looking at a shift of over 20 points in favor of the Democrats among a group that should be at least a quarter of voters in 2020. That’s huge.
This pro-Democratic shift is very much in evidence in 2020 battleground states. The list includes Florida, where seniors should be an unusually high 30 percent of voters (a 17 point shift); Pennsylvania (24 points); and Michigan (26 points). In short, the age group that was President Trump’s greatest strength in 2016 is turning into a liability. In an election where he will need every vote against a strong Democratic challenge, that could be disastrous — and a harbinger of a new, broader coalition for the Democrats.
Who are these seniors who are turning against Mr. Trump? As you might expect, the racial composition of the 65 and over population is majority white — about four in five. And among white seniors, we see the same shift as among seniors as a whole, over 20 points. The movement of white seniors against the president is clearly driving this trend.
There are a number of possible reasons for this disenchantment. First, while they are a relatively conservative population group, they are not as conservative as their reputation suggests. For example, according to the Nationscape data (over 20,000 interviews with registered white senior voters since the beginning of the year), white seniors support increasing taxes on those earning over $600,000 a year by 44 points. They also support paid family leave by 29 points and a $15-an-hour minimum wage by 21 points. On health care, they support a public option for government health insurance by 34 points.
He goes on to show that they are also quite conservative on many culture issues like trans rights, 10 Commandments in public buildings etc, so we can’t get all warm and fuzzy about the elder progressivism. But it may be that they aren’t quite as bad on economics as people think and that could be important going forward.
They see Good Ole Joe as a moderate guy, decent and wholesome and that matters to a lot of people after Trump. But there’s also this:
No doubt his appeal has been strengthened by the president’s response to the coronavirus, which has hit this group far worse than it has younger Americans. The president’s performance, and his ostentatious concern with reopening the economy rather than preventing deaths among the most vulnerable, has not gone down well with these voters.
For many, disenchantment actually predates the current crisis. But the pandemic, and Mr. Trump’s handling of it, has reinforced the shift.
Tuxeira thinks Trump may be able to get these voters back with his calls to “Law and Order” if they think the protests are getting out of hand. He may be right about that. Older people are more afraid of violence than younger people because they feel physically vulnerable and many of them no doubt harbor racist beliefs that fuel their reactions.
However, I’m not sure Trump’s calls for “Law and Order” are very reassuring. His non-stop bluster and overreactions don’t exactly sound like someone who knows what he’s doing.
When Trump yells “Law and Order”, what he doesn’t realize is that he’s actually agitating against his re-election. After all, he is, as we speak, having his Attorney General turn the Justice Department into a joke to cover for his and his cronies’ crimes. And his chaotic presidency is overwhelmingly exhausting. If you really care about “law” and “order” Donald Trump is the last person you want in the White House.
Update: I am reminded of this piece in the Atlantic from October 2016:
Trump supporters were older, on average, [in the primaries] than those of other Republican candidates. Despite the stereotype of the Trump supporter as a prime-aged working man, Trump’s campaign has actually been fueled primarily by support from the elderly.
This makes sense, doesn’t it? Trump’s whole candidacy is predicated on nostalgia—not just making America great, but making it great again, returning it to an imagined, prelapsarian state of greatness. (Appropriately, Trump stole the slogan from Ronald Reagan.) More so even than most Republican candidates, Trump has run a campaign aimed squarely and frankly at old people’s nostalgia, fear of danger, and anxiety about social change.
How’d that work out for them? Do they feel safer today than they did four years ago? I doubt it…