17 September 2008
Senior Citizens Most Reliable Group of U.S. Voters
Experts consider effect of elderly voters on Obama-McCain race
Washington — U.S. presidential nominees Barack Obama and John McCain are vying for the vote of senior citizens, who political analysts tell America.gov are the most reliable group to vote in American elections.
Curtis Gans, director of the nonpartisan Center for the Study of the American Electorate at American University in Washington, said seniors vote at a rate of about 60 percent more than young people and about 10 percentage points higher than the national average.
Gans added that seniors are the only group in America that has been increasing its rate of voter turnout, especially in the 75-and-older range where modern medicine is keeping people alive longer.
Senior citizens’ effect on the 2008 presidential election, Gans said, “really depends on whether there is a decided split” in which the senior vote helps turns the tide in favor of the Republican McCain or the Democrat Obama. If the vote is split evenly, other voting blocs might have more effect than the elderly, said Gans, whose center seeks bipartisan approaches on how to increase U.S. voter turnout.
Like much of the general electorate, older Americans are not single-issue voters, unless they feel a particular candidate threatens their Social Security retirement and Medicare health benefits, Gans said. Otherwise, he said, seniors vote on a candidate’s experience on the economy, America’s role in the world, health care issues and “a whole series of things that are ‘senior citizen issues.’” (See “2008 Presidential Race Shatters Old Barriers for Candidates.”)
The crisis in the U.S. financial markets, Gans said, will hurt McCain and the Republicans if history serves as a guide; economic troubles typically redound against the political party in power. Republican President Bush has held the White House since 2001.
The crisis will help Obama with seniors if they find the Democrat credible on how to resolve the country’s economic problems, Gans said. “In this economic climate people are looking for change.”
Gans said his guess is that the elderly “will react somewhat negatively” to Sarah Palin, McCain’s vice presidential pick, because seniors “do value experience, and they’re more attuned to the fact that there’s fragility in one’s life expectancy.”
According to Gans, Palin has yet to prove to seniors that she has command of the problems America faces nationally and internationally. He said Palin, Alaska’s governor, could “perform wonderfully” in her October 2 debate with Democratic vice president nominee Joe Biden and mitigate some of the concerns held by senior citizens about her.
SENIORS CONCERNED ABOUT HEALTH CARE, ECONOMY
David Woodard, a political science professor at Clemson University in South Carolina, said he thinks the 72-year-old McCain is the favorite among seniors because the Arizona senator is from the “geriatric era of elderly voters.”
But Woodard, who previously worked as a political consultant for Republican candidates, said many Democrats will vote for that party’s ticket regardless of age.
Woodard said health care clearly is a major issue for seniors. He added that “given the state of Wall Street” (New York’s financial district), which includes the Lehman Brothers investment firm declaring bankruptcy on September 15, the economy also weighs heavily, especially for people living on a fixed income.
Woodward said he expects McCain to win all 11 states of the American South, including the so-called battleground (closely contested) state of Florida with its large elderly population.
“My suspicion is that Florida is not a battleground state,” Woodard said. “I think it’s moving closer” to McCain “than it has been for some time.”
Allan Saxe, a political science professor at the University of Texas, said seniors always have been an important voting group “since they vote regularly and in great numbers.”
This group, he said, is also of “great importance” to McCain because the younger voters (18-26) “seem to be for Obama.”
Saxe said seniors “may indeed vote for McCain because of his age and his experience and his pro-life posture” regarding abortion.
He added that the pro-life stand on abortion by McCain and Palin will appeal to seniors who may be “a bit more conservative on abortion issues” than younger people. Also, McCain's military experience in Vietnam could win over “many seniors who are veterans or married to veterans,” Saxe said.
Robert Binstock, professor of aging, health and society at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio, said, as in the past three decades, “older voters will distribute their votes much like other age groups do, except for the youngest age group, 18-29,” who favor Obama according to public opinion polls.
“There are no particular senior issues" in this election, said Binstock, co-author of Aging Nation: The Economics and Politics of Growing Older in America.
Binstock said seniors are not “one-dimensional, single-issue voters. … They are people of all races, religions, partisan attachments, socioeconomic status, region, etc. They have much the same range of issues on their minds as American adults in general.”
SENIOR ADVOACACY GROUP SEEKS TO BYPASS WASHINGTON GRIDLOCK
Drew Nannis, a spokesman for AARP, a Washington-based nonpartisan advocacy group for seniors, told America.gov that “health care and long-term financial security are of the utmost concern for older Americans. Therefore, we need to hold the presidential candidates to higher standards to be sure that they’ll address these vital issues and change them for the better.”
He said AARP has created the “Divided We Fail” campaign “to push party politics aside and bypass the gridlock plaguing Washington in order to make advancements” on those issues. “The only way this goal can be achieved is if we let partisanship fall by the wayside and truly commit ourselves to improving these fundamental issues,” Nannis said.
See Obama’s policy positions on senior citizens and McCain’s proposals on health care on the candidates’ respective Web sites.
More information about the Divided We Fail campaign is on the AARP Web site.
