Newsweek: GOP owes victory to Seniors

Despite what the cable coverage may suggest, the most consequential data point to emerge from Election Night 2010 wasn't Christine O'Donnell's defeat in Delaware. Or Linda McMahon's loss in Connecticut. Or even Rand Paul's victory in Kentucky. Instead, it was a single number buried deep in the exit polls: 23.

That's the percentage of voters Tuesday who were over 65 years of age, which explains a lot about how the Republican Party got here, and a lot about where it's going. The question now is whether this senior moment is a positive development for the GOP—or a sign of trouble ahead.

The first thing worth noting is that the number of seniors voting this year was extraordinarily high. Early in the night, many commentators made the mistake of marveling at the big jump in turnout from 2008 to 2010. That's misleading. The geriatric set always makes up a disproportionate slice of the midterm electorate, so it's not really accurate to compare a midterm to a presidential election. But this year's slice was more like a hunk. In the last midterm elections, in 2006, over-65ers made up 19 percent of the voter pool; the same goes for 1994, the last time the GOP ran the board on a recently elected Democratic president. So this year's number—again, 23 percent—is a full 4 percentage points higher than the recent benchmarks. It was a historic night for early-birders.

And that's a major reason it was a historic night for the GOP. Obama has always had trouble with older voters; NEWSWEEK was writing about his handicap as early as April 2008. But after the initial excitement over his presidency wore off, seniors became a particularly glaring soft spot for Democrats. Sixty-three percent recently told New York Times/CBS News pollsters they were disappointed in Obama, and surveys have repeatedly shown that they "remain the group most resistant to Obama's health-care agenda and the most skeptical of him overall." As a result, Tuesday's exit polls showed that in contrast to 2006, when voters over 65 split their vote 49 percent to 49 percent between Democrats and the GOP, they now support Republicans 58–40, by far the largest pro-GOP margin of any age group. This means that retirees accounted for more than four of the estimated six percentage points that separated Republicans from Democrats in the national popular vote. The GOP has officially become the party of older people.

http://www.newsweek.com/2010/11/03/forget-the-tea-party-republicans-won-because-of-older-voters.html

Don't they realize that teabaggers want to get rid of SS and Medicare?

Rush Limbaugh and Hannity all day. They've convinced her Dems are devils who give her tax money to undeserving welfare recipients who then go out and buy steak with it. Racism is at the core of all this. Deep seated hatred blots out all reason and sanity.

there are so many people pushing baskets that are just overflowing with items, and of course in my area most of them are black, and a little bit country. so the older whites automatically get pissed and you would be amazed at how many of those senior mentioned in the story tell me how sick they are of welfare. how do they know i'm not on welfare because my basket will only have a few items in it. no joke it happens every time I go in the store, and I'm black.

I enjoy Simpsons references...it's all I have left now.

you know...


20 years?

Might be a while yet.

Drat the luck!

Seniors tend to be the demographic most afraid of change and they cling to the notion that the "good old days" actually were the "good old days".

But people who were dumb young don't actually find brains with Social Security.

dumb seniors tomorrow clinging to republicans. They were there on day 1 one will still be with us when the world ends or whatever, the clueless lame ones.

Just sayin'

First Boomer hasn't reached 65 yet!

away, as they die off the young ones of today replace them. It sucks!!!

Obama is race related. That said, it's just stupid for seniors to vote R. If it wasn't for the Dems they'd have no Social Security check and no Medicare because those programs would never have been enacted under repukes. They have very short memories, apparently, and spend too much time sitting in front of the tv listening to anti-Dem propaganda,

it doesn't say that ........probably don't think/care much about other + 65 citizens anyway!

the Civil Rights movement, and I know that many still vote Dem. My mother is one. However, there are also many seniors who spend too much time watching the likes of Limbaugh and Hannity and taking cues from them. Reagan converted a lot of Dems back in the 80's. I have several elderly relatives who became Reagan Democrats and then Repukes. Others were always right leaning and continue to vote R - completely against their own self-interest (except for the millionaires).

That's for sure.

all the folks who would have called you an "n-lover" for doing so. Not all have gone to their reward, nor have their sentiments changed.

since he's getting on in years, is a cancer survivor, and had been a POW. Just a hunch.

Just look at all the Tea Bagger signs that showed Obama with a bone in his nose.

And the republicans did not once chastise anyone for pulling this shit.

They snickered.

Short term strategy, long term disaster for the GOP...

The closest today's seniors have come to seeing an ethnic President was Irish-American John F. Kennedy. Many of them simply cannot handle seeing a "colored" man as President, and that made fertile ground for the GOP's scare tactics.

It is ironic that today's seniors have enjoyed the socialistic benefits of the New Deal all their lives. They rush to the polls to vote for those who want to decimate those benefits.

on Social Security...

"LA-LA-LA-LA-LA! I CAN'T HEAR YOU!"

Seniors do not all vote alike.

similar to teabaggers who fall for R propaganda. And there are plenty of young people today that will be the old republicans of tomorrow.

The manipulation of senior voters by the Republicans really upset me. Totally craven and reprehensible.

just like the REST OF US do.

My wife's 94 year old grandmother got indoctrinated by a Fox News loving aunt about the "death panels" and now can't be talked out of it. She believes Obama will be sending all old people home to die with an aspirin.

And she is a lifelong Democrat...

(joke... I am not a youngster myself)

always smelled good. So after a couple of beers once I tried a couple of spoonfuls and it wasn't bad. Of course he demanded I give the rest to him, and that's the end of the story. My cat can have his dry food. He loves it, I do not!

Way to go, oldsters! To paraphrase one of the very few good ones, "die quickly."

but not in the droves necessary...

How long until they get it? YOU NEED TO FUCKING VOTE!!!!

And to the young voters who did... YOU GET IT.

The lady next to me was confused and asked her husband "did you vote for all 10". This was the same as saying "we're both voting straight Republican" as there were only 6 Democrats running for those same seats. One of the Republican sign holders asked the same man (husband above) how he was enjoying retirement. :eyes:

We are getting beat at the ground-game level. This needs to stop.

:popcorn:

the benefits of the New Deal, Social Security, Medicare, Medicare part D, etc. But they don't want to have to pay for anyone coming after them to get anything. Have you noticed that all of the proposed changes to Social Security wouldn't apply to those currently over 55? These folks get to act like the rest of us should buck up to lower the deficit, but they shouldn't have to lose anything.

I know that not all seniors think like that, but plenty do. I talk to them everyday.

They think today's youth can just go out there and get a job, maybe.

Fortunately I haven't forgotten my civics lessons and know it's not the president who creates the biggest messes with our economy, it's the Congress since they hold the purse strings and the veto override power. So getting even with the president by voting for proven-do-nothing-constructive Republicans is as baffling to me as the attraction of dogs to tires on moving vehicles.

After reading it's my fellow age-group travelers who have set the country in reverse, I'm convinced Alzheimer's is far more prevalent than imagined.

not "pulling the plug on Granny"; health-care reform that doesn't reduce their costs; no jobs for their grand-kids; etc.

Sorry, but racism does not need to rear its ugly head here.

$250 checks to replace the fact that there was no inflation to give a COLA, increased drug benefit, free preventive care with Medicare, increased college funds for their grandkids.

I don't know WHY you chose to believe the exact same shit these knuckleheaded Repub seniors are believing - but you have. And THAT is why we lost. Bottom Line.

Repeat anti-Democrat lies, and holy shit, Democrats Lose! It's fuckin' astonishing!!

worked well. And it was easy...look how often we saw those signs, "Keep your government hands off my Medicare!"

and their free preventative health screenings, and all the wasteful spending we were doing to Medicare Advantage plans, and now the repubes are going to cut Medicare benefits and social security payments even more, so

pull your head out of your asses seniors who voted for repubes and go out and do some f*cking research about some of this sh*t!!!

Spend a lot of time in places that have Faux Noise playing continuously.

that the rest of us felt. But they came out in numbers in reaction to that terror, and other demographic groups did not respond in the same way.

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Fox news told them all the needed to know about Obama.

is responsible for the "wave".

voted straight democrat

:yourock:

Seniors don't like their free social security WELFARE checks?

And yes, it most assuredly IS welfare, not "insurance" or any other sanitized word used to make people think it isn't.

Oh well, have fun with the cat food, pops.

I always wonder if these people think getting a check from State Farm when their house burns down is "welfare."

Under any definition of welfare, it's welfare.

There is no insurance aspect to SS, no individual accounts, none of that. It's a tax paid by workers. Yes, most people do "pay in," but that's no different than any other kind of welfare. All taxpayers pay in to the system.

Welfare is not a bad thing. That's the whole crux of the problem. We've let the right wing make "welfare" a dirty word when it ought to be a wonderful one.

not quite senior, well, some may say, but only a little gray, ok, so i am graying late, ..... no cane anyway.

bah hahaha

tushes to the polls to vote, you gave away your right to complain.

white seniors and fear and ultra nationalism without the racism, most of the rest. I hate to say it but if my chances at social security and medicare are greatly diminished, then I want any cuts to be immediate. I want them to know what their ideology really means. It may sound cruel but the people they like are cruel. Give them what they voted for.

They don't owe this senior a damn thing. And I'm happy to have it that way.

Assholes.

"government takeover of healthcare." The guy who was doing the talking bragged that he fought in WWII, so you can figure his age. I felt like shouting at the tv," What the hell are you talking about? Your healthcare is provided by the government." I couldn't figure out who was the bigger moron, the guy pontificating in the ad or the idiot who dreamed it up.

way it was written and executed that rubbed them the wrong way.

and I'm in my 50s. Everyone in there was a senior, and there was a line after me that was 10 deep - everyone was a senior. My husband tried to rationalize it by saying it was the middle of the day (we're farmers so we went after morning chores) and everyone else was probably still working, so only retired folks were out. But I was very uneasy. I'd never seen it that crowded before - ever! Not even for 2008, and never with that population of seniors.

My mother and I had words on Monday night. She's gone completely tea bagger (I've written about her in the past and how terribly difficult she is for me) to the point that she doesn't want to educate anyone else's children anymore! Her selfishness and complete abdication of any kind of social consciousness makes me nauseated. I'm beginning to wonder about "the greatest generation" and their compassion. It's all gone from what I can see.

religious nuts that go off the deep end. When you add it all up, it doesn't make for a compassionate bunch IMO. I spin the AM dial sometimes and I'm really shocked at the crap spewed non-stop. A steady diet of that stuff is enough to make anyone rabid IMO.

Her steady diet of hate news programming. :( My sister came to visit from California over Christmas last year and was planning on staying with my mom. She walked in the door and Faux was playing on the teevee. My sister stopped dead in her tracks and told her she wouldn't stay here if that was going to be playing the whole visit.

My mom was furious! Told her that Faux was just "the news" and that she couldn't believe my sister's ignorance! They had a nice visit over tea with the teevee turned off, and then my sister came to stay with me. My mom hadn't had a visit from my sister in more than 5 years and couldn't get over her Faux News fix for even that!

It's sick.

:sarcasm:

Social Security. Hell, I am one of these old farts and they drive me up the wall. I can't stand them. I guess they just thought everything was so wonderful under Bush. For many of them I think racism is at the core of it all. They just can't stand to see a black guy as president.

Now I'm an old white guy and I think having a black president is great! This place has to get into the 21st century. With the R's in these old farts are going to find out reality really really fast.

These Senior's have short memnories but then again many of these white Senior's forget which party fought for them on issus of Social Security, Medicare, and worker's rights issues....

Many of these Senior's are selfish and many are also RACISTS too!!!

Maybe cutting their social security checks for good would be a good thing and perhaps some of these Senior Citizen bigots could take their crap to the streets where many of them belong with their white supremacist views.

Alzheimers in the family, ya know.

They're just aging. The young didn't vote that much, and a lot of people who were 61 or 62 or 63 or 64 in 2006 are over 65 now.

Of course, don't expect to have people dependent on Soc Sec with no COLAs happy when the Fed is trying to inflate and they can't afford to buy food.

In September, 22.7% of the people over 65 are still working or looking for work. They're not exactly having an easy time of it. Workforce participation for this group keeps rising because they can't make ends meet.