An old maxim in American politics is that older voters prefer the Republican party and younger voters the Democrat.
That’s what happened in 2020, when Democrat Joe Biden won among voters under 50 and Republican Donald Trump won among those over 50, according to exit polls. Biden’s margin among younger voters (he had 65% of voters aged 18 to 24) helped him surpass Trump’s 52% of older voters, who represented more than half the electorate.
In 2016, Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the Electoral College despite her having more votes than him, but the pattern of younger voters supporting Democrats continued. Hillary won more votes among voters between 18 and 44, and Trump more among voters over 45, according to polls.
In 2012, Republican Mitt Romney lost the elections, but had a better result than Democrat Barack Obama among voters aged 45 and over.
Voters under 30 have not voted en masse for the Republican party since 1988, when George HW Bush defeated Democrat Michael Dukakis by a landslide. Voters over 65 have not voted for a Democrat since 2000, when Al Gore lost the election despite having more votes than Republican George W. Bush.
However, the old rules do not appear to apply in this year’s presidential elections, where both candidates are elderly men and their fitness to serve is a major issue. Older voters tend to flock to Biden and younger voters are moving toward Trump.
A new Marist Poll poll in the swing state of Pennsylvania, for example, showed a tight race overall with Trump at 47% and Biden at 45%, a difference within the margin of error.
Trump is winning nonwhite voters and is nearly tied with Biden among voters under 45 in this poll. Older voters have moved in the opposite direction, and instead of favoring Trump, they are almost divided in this same poll.
It is a trend that extends to other states. In a national Quinnipiac University poll released in May, Biden and Trump split among younger voters, but Biden has an advantage among voters 65 and older.
Not all polls show the same level of change, but the overall movement among younger and older voters differs from previous results.
Biden has faced questions about his age that have plagued his re-election campaign and worried voters, according to opinion polls.
“Joe is not one of the most effective presidents of all time despite his age, but rather because of it,” first lady Jill Biden said at a campaign event in Wisconsin this week, part of a travel effort three-day campaign aimed at boosting support for Biden among older voters.
Older voters are essentially from the same era as Biden and Trump. Both men were born in the 1940s.
Jeff Zeleny and Eric Bradner, from CNNnote that older voters were “alive in the aftermath of World War II and the Cold War, a period Biden attempts to address by casting Trump as a threat to democracy.”
They also write that “by 2024, ‘baby boomers’, a phrase used for people born between 1945 and 1964, now make up a large majority of the elderly vote for the first time – an enticing demographic shift that the Biden campaign is trying to win over in Michigan and all over the country”.
In Michigan, Zeleny and Bradner spoke with Linda Van Werden, a retired real estate agent who only became active in politics after Trump’s 2016 victory.
“I never thought I would be one of those people who would hold a political sign or get involved, but I can’t sit by and watch all this happen,” he declared.
Despite the shift of older voters toward Biden (and younger voters away from him), I was surprised to see older voters still have reservations about Biden’s age.
In a New York Times/Siena College poll in February, nearly three-quarters of voters 65 and older said Biden was too old to be effective as president, compared with less than half who said the same about Trump. These are numbers that are repeated in the general population.
Ronald Brownstein, from CNNnoted last year that older voters were more likely to approve of Biden’s job performance and argued that some of his policy victories, such as the push to lower Medicare drug costs, appeal directly to seniors.
Whatever the reason, if Biden is going to overcome questions about his age to keep his job, it will be with the help of people his own age.
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