WILMINGTON, Del. — As Democrats worry about losing ground with young voters in November, Biden’s campaign is increasingly encouraged by an offsetting trend — a shift among the nation’s oldest voters in favor of the president oldest in the country.
A wave of recent researches shows less support for the president Joe Biden among some traditionally solid Democratic constituencies — not just young voters, but also black and Latino voters. However, some of the same surveyIt’s a Biden show leading among voters 65 and older, a trend that, if it persists through November, would make him the first Democrat to win among seniors since Al Gore in 2000.
With that in mind, on Tuesday the campaign launches Seniors for Biden-Harris, a national organizing effort to leverage what it considers important advantages among these voters, a campaign spokesperson said. Second Gentleman Douglas Emhoff will help launch the effort with an event Friday in New Hampshire, the swing state with the highest percentage of residents age 65 and older, according to the campaign spokesperson.
First lady Jill Biden will also bolster outreach with statewide swing events in the coming weeks, along with other surrogates that will spread across events that include postcard writing, phone banks and even pickleball tournaments, the spokesperson said.
Biden advisers and his Democratic allies offer a variety of explanations for the recent shift among older voters, including some factors that they say also explain the decline in support among other groups.
Older voters, they say, are much more likely than younger voters to consume traditional media outlets such as newspapers and news broadcasts; younger voters are increasingly turned off or get their information from places like TikTok. One NBC News p.it’s ok in april found that Biden had a lead of more than 50 points among newspaper readers, but lost 26 points among voters who said they don’t follow political news.
Biden’s advisers also believe his argument about freedom and democracy particularly resonates with a generation of voters who lived through the post-World War II and Cold War eras. Biden aides said his speech on democracy Last week in France was an intentional echo of Ronald Reagan’s remarks 40 years earlier, something that may resonate with the Republican icon’s longtime supporters.
John Della Volpe, who has done extensive research on young voters, said older voters have embraced Biden’s policies, such as lowering the cost of prescription drugs, while younger voters do not feel similar benefits from them.
“On the other hand, while I believe he accomplished even more than people might have expected on younger people’s priorities — climate, gun violence, student loan debt — few have been able to see the tangible benefit of it,” he said. Della Volpe.
Biden traveled to New Hampshire before Memorial Day to highlight the expansion of benefits for veterans under the PACT Act, which he signed into law. He highlighted the story of Lisa Clark, an Air Force veteran who is receiving legal benefits after her husband, a combat engineer during the Vietnam War, died of cancer. He also saluted Clark’s 96-year-old father, a World War II veteran who was in the audience.
Rep. Ann McLane Kuster, D-N.H., said older voters in her state and elsewhere are attracted to Biden’s “steady hand.”
“They want someone with competence,” Kuster said. “They don’t like volatility and they don’t like risk.” Kuster also said that older voters who remember what the country was like before Roe v. Wade legalizes abortion, they could be motivated by the issue now because it affects their daughters and granddaughters.
NBC News’ April poll found that Biden and former President Donald Trump were essentially tied among voters ages 18 to 29 in a head-to-head matchup. At the same time, Biden had a small lead among voters 65 and older, according to the poll.
While Trump won voters ages 65 and older in the 2016 election by 7 percentage points, Biden narrowed that gap to 5 points in 2020. Biden also won voters ages 18 to 29 by 24 percentage points in 2020, underscoring how critical the electorate was for his victory.
Both candidates are elderly – Biden is 81 and Trump is expected to turn 78 on Friday.
Biden’s campaign hopes to maintain its apparent momentum among older voters, in part by contrasting Biden’s proposals for seniors with Trump’s policies.
Biden, in his State of the Union address and at most stops since, has criticized Republicans over proposals to scale back reform programs such as Social Security and Medicare.
The Trump campaign says it is Biden who is putting thOyour programs at risk due to lax immigration policies that would be supported by a stronger economy.
Biden said expanding the so-called care economy would be a focus of his second term, promising to give new momentum to parts of his so-called Build Back Better agenda that failed to pass Congress in his first term. Vice President Kamala Harris focused on attracting more senior and disability care professionals at an event last month at a Wisconsin nursing home.
“The stakes of this election could not be higher for seniors: A second Trump presidency promises to virtually reverse the progress we have made and instead raise daily costs for seniors so that Trump can appease his friends billionaires,” said Mia Ehrenberg, a spokeswoman for the Biden campaign. “Seniors are a critical part of the winning Biden-Harris coalition in November, and the campaign is working every day to show up and win their support.”
Biden was endorsed this year by the Alliance for Retired Americans, which holds weekly phone banks among seniors and plans other events in swing states.
Richard Fiesta, the organization’s executive director, said he also hopes to build on another major Biden initiative this fall, when the administration plans to announce lower prices for 10 prescription drugs negotiated through Medicare, a key element of the Inflation Reduction Act.
Fiesta said ideally the efforts won’t just help Biden with seniors. There has been “a lot of discussion about how to get the grandchildren and the nieces and the nephews to sit up and pay attention,” he said.
Della Volpe said what he calls a “zoomer-boomer” coalition of younger and older voters helped Biden win four years ago. But this year, “boomers may have to carry more weight than their grandchildren,” he said.
This article was originally published in NBCNews. with
