JONATHAN CHAIT JULY 2, 2010
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Pew finds older, Republican-leaning voters far more likely to vote this year than younger, Democratic-leaning voters:
Voters younger than age 30 favor the Democratic candidate in their district by a wide margin (57% to 32%). Yet only half of young voters say they are absolutely certain to vote. Voters ages 50 and older favor the Republican candidate in their district by double digits (11 points) and roughly eight-in-ten (79%) say they are absolutely certain to vote.
And, as many polls have found, the public still views the Democratic Party more favorably than the GOP on key measures:
But that probably is not going to have much impact at the polls in November. And if the economy continues to tank, as appears likely right now, look out below.
6 comments
So older Americans will come out and protect their socialism (single payer Medicare and Social Security) while making darn sure the younger people paying the bills get nothing, and the unemployed can go die in a ditch. Maybe the Democrats therefore need to calibrate the message that Rand Paul, Paul Ryan, and Pat Toomey would gut their programs if what they wanted really was passed.
- MikeB.
July 2, 2010 at 8:52am
Democrats need to do something to motivate these voters. Why they are not motivated just astounds me. Any run-in I have with a conservative makes my blood pressure shoot up, and motivates me to do anything to prevent these asshats from ever being in power.
- zardoz67
July 2, 2010 at 10:21am
We get these cycles of rising and falling voter motivation. Conservatives were less motivated to vote at the end of Bush's ghastly tenure than they were at the head end. A lot rides on the economy, of course. November is very likely to not be good and it could be a bloodbath. Here's hoping for the best
- liberal reformer
July 2, 2010 at 11:12am
I would dare say to that there is a whole system that encourages a kind of infantile politics among many Seniors. There is a serious question of generational equity. One of the major parts of the Federal budget is the transfer of wealth from the young to the old through payroll taxes to pay for Social Security and Medicare. The current recipiants never paid enough into it to balance it out. They have also thus been shielded from economic downturns. I am not advocating doing away with these programs. Far far from it. However, living in this economic cacoon has allowed political nonsense, often funded by people like Rupert Murdoch, to flourish among seniors in which all other government programs to help people are "socialism," yet the programs that benefit them are somehow not even government programs. I would like though Democrats to start campaigning to seniors on the fact that the Rand Pauls, etc. would do away with their programs. Heck Angle thinks it is unconstitutional since Social Security is not mentioned explicitly in the Constitution.
- MikeB.
July 2, 2010 at 11:28am
Zardoz, I am starting to feel like you do. The banality of some of the editorials coming out on the right is just so frustrating. Plus, the somewhat dishonest nature of them is also contriubting to my bad blood pressure. Fox News had a mocking headline that Pelosi thinks unemployment benefits creates jobs. Well it totally missed the nuance of what she was saying. She said the benefits acted as a Keysian stimulus to prop up businesses. However, by ignoring the nuance, Fox made it seem like she was advocating giving people unemployment benefits forever as a permanant job.
- MikeB.
July 2, 2010 at 1:40pm
That makes sense. Conservatives don't do nuance. Anything more complicated than "See Spot. See Spot run. Run Spot run." makes then lash out.
- zardoz67
July 2, 2010 at 2:37pm