Senior Voters, Some Wavering on Trump, Figure to Shape 2020 Election

The fastest-growing segment of the U.S. electorate is seniors. They supported Mr. Trump in 2016 but aren’t squarely in his camp as the 2020 campaign picks up. In 2016, despite polling showing an advantage for Democrat Hillary Clinton, voters over 65 backed Mr. Trump in the presidential election by a 52%-45% margin, according to exit polls. With still more than a year before next year’s election, 41% of seniors in a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll in June said they would prefer to see Mr. Trump re-elected, while 48% favored a generic Democrat to win in 2020. That comes as 46% of seniors said they approve of Mr. Trump’s performance in office, slightly higher than his 44% overall approval rating.

Among 18-to-34 year-olds, Mr. Trump’s approval rating is just 33%, the Wall Street Journal/NBC poll shows, and Democratic candidates have paid great attention to young voters this cycle, announcing support for plans like student-debt forgiveness. But the fastest-growing generation of voters isn’t millennials, it is seniors. Voters over age 65 are projected to make up nearly a quarter of the electorate in 2020, the highest such share since 1970, according to the Pew Research Center.

Seniors are the likeliest to actually cast ballots, with two-thirds of them voting in the 2018 midterms compared with 53% of the overall voting-age population. While the electorate in presidential years skews younger than in midterm ones, no Democratic presidential candidate has won seniors since Al Gore in 2000, and for the past five presidential-election cycles, every Republican nominee has won a larger share of seniors than his predecessor. Now, some voters who cast ballots for Mr. Trump in 2016 are put off by the president’s brash tweets and his lashing out at lawmakers who criticized him or opposed his actions.

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Democrats, too, face a potential hurdle with older voters: Many stances such as calls to decriminalize southern border crossings, or the embrace by some of the “socialist” label, alienate many seniors. In recent Wall Street Journal/NBC News polling, 42% of seniors said immigration “weakens America’s values,” compared with 24% of voters under 35. Older voters also have a strong aversion to “socialism,” with the label receiving a 37-percentage-point net negative rating, compared with a net negative 17-point rating among voters under 35.

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The Democratic candidates have begun making pitches to their older constituents in recent weeks, with Mr. Biden, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar and others releasing policy plans targeted at seniors that address high prescription-drug costs, Medicare solvency, long-term care and other issues. Three-quarters of the candidates addressed older voters at AARP-sponsored events last month in Iowa, where more than half of attendees at the state’s caucuses early next year are expected to be older than 50.

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https://www.wsj.com/articles/senior-voters-some-wavering-on-trump-figure-to-shape-2020-election-11565429401 (paid subscription)

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Not this senior, not this senior's spouse..