NBC: Biden+27 with seniors

[Inmate Trump]

Didn’t Trump just say people have to get used to living dying with covid?

I’d imagine that doesn’t play well with the demographics most likely to die of covid.

[OSR stands with Israel]

If old people really do swing to Biden, 2020 will be an interesting coalition of the very young and very old voters uniting behind Biden for very different reasons.

Thats how things were in the New Deal Era with the Democrats getting big numbers with Young and Old Voters while Middle-Aged voters were a Republican Leaning Group.

Also remember Bush's best group were people aged 30-49(which is how the exit poll did it then) while Trump's is 45-64 so basically the core Republican group has been for decades the people who came to age under Reagan


https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/how-groups-voted-2004

[Adam Griffin]

lol

For this to be even remotely accurate, Biden would be up by no more than 4-5 points among the rest of the electorate.

[Progressive Pessimist]

Obviously seniors' self-preservation instincts taking priority is a large part of this purported lead, but I also wonder if seniors just simply identify and sympathize with Biden. For all the s*** he has gotten for his age and how people have questioned him for it, I could see seniors relating to that and being bothered by the assumption.

[Lief 🗽]

Biden leading with seniors is especially impressive because they are much, MUCH whiter than the rest of the electorate.

[Ferguson97]

FYI most of these seniors who switched from Trump to Biden are registered Republicans who will show up as Republican in the early vote counts.

Many of those types have been voting Republican since....Ronald Reagan.

I wouldn't look into any of this at all really.

Yes... exactly... lifelong Republicans switching to Biden because of Trump's failures.

[demoman1596]

FYI most of these seniors who switched from Trump to Biden are registered Republicans who will show up as Republican in the early vote counts.

Many of those types have been voting Republican since....Ronald Reagan.

I wouldn't look into any of this at all really.

Yes... exactly... lifelong Republicans switching to Biden because of Trump's failures.

Totally anecdotal, but something that is striking to me in any case, is that it seems that both of my parents fit into this category.  My mom, who has always been a Republican and I believe voted for Trump in 2016, seems to be completely disgusted with his response to COVID-19 and healthcare related issues, while my dad, who, like my mom, is a WWC lifelong Republican from suburban Detroit, shifted in 2016 to voting for Democrats across the board out of disgust for what the Republican party has become under Trump.  Perhaps moving to Texas a number of years ago didn't help the GOP's case with him either.  My parents are around 60 and haven't spoken to each other for almost 15 years.

Anyway, again, totally anecdotal, but it still surprises me that they would be so prone to changing their minds.

[TheLaRocca]

Biden leading with seniors is especially impressive because they are much, MUCH whiter than the rest of the electorate.

They are 65+ voters

84% white (electorate is 76%)
13% black (electorate is like 10%)
rest is other 3%

they are overwhelmingly white but have lots of blacks. in georgia IIRC Clinton got 40% of over 65. that entire over 65 is blacks.

so means Biden's holding up with old blacks (who are the largest black electorate) and improving with whites hard.

[Bootes Void]

Talk about seniors being a bunch of liars

[ElectionsGuy]

If the exit poll is right, Trump won seniors by 5. That's a 32 point error!! Senior samples have tended to skew female and that's why they are more Dem than they end up being, and that's been a problem for a while, but I don't even think response bias can fully explain this.

There was obviously an effort on the part of the media to scare seniors into voting Democrat by blaming Trump for the pandemic. Part of it I think was insane social desirability bias when it came to topics regarding the pandemic. Anybody who wanted the economy open or their schools open was accused of putting money before lives (despite other evidence that closing the economy lead to an unprecedented amount of suicides and overdoses, but we'll ignore that). They were scapegoated as not taking the pandemic seriously, not following the "experts" (you don't want to be against the experts do you?). I think this hit the hardest against seniors because they consume by far the most amount of cable and network news.

The other explanation I can resort to (but don't want to) is that it was something the overwhelming amount of Democrats (and therefore pollsters) wanted to happen, so they made it true in their polls. Then it became a consensus that seniors were abandoning Trump.

But regardless, the blue wave pushers ate it up. They believed it hook line and sinker. They didn't question the other age brackets or have any skepticism, because they liked what the poll showed.

[ElectionsGuy]

FYI most of these seniors who switched from Trump to Biden are registered Republicans who will show up as Republican in the early vote counts.

Many of those types have been voting Republican since....Ronald Reagan.

I wouldn't look into any of this at all really.

Yes... exactly... lifelong Republicans switching to Biden because of Trump's failures.

Trump got 94% of the Republican vote. Total hoax.

You know what could've predicted that, to the exact percentage point? The Republican primary, where Trump got 94%.

[Roll Roons]

If the exit poll is right, Trump won seniors by 5. That's a 32 point error!! Senior samples have tended to skew female and that's why they are more Dem than they end up being, and that's been a problem for a while, but I don't even think response bias can fully explain this.

There was obviously an effort on the part of the media to scare seniors into voting Democrat by blaming Trump for the pandemic. Part of it I think was insane social desirability bias when it came to topics regarding the pandemic. Anybody who wanted the economy open or their schools open was accused of putting money before lives (despite other evidence that closing the economy lead to an unprecedented amount of suicides and overdoses, but we'll ignore that). They were scapegoated as not taking the pandemic seriously, not following the "experts" (you don't want to be against the experts do you?). I think this hit the hardest against seniors because they consume by far the most amount of cable and network news.

The other explanation I can resort to (but don't want to) is that it was something the overwhelming amount of Democrats (and therefore pollsters) wanted to happen, so they made it true in their polls. Then it became a consensus that seniors were abandoning Trump.

But regardless, the blue wave pushers ate it up. They believed it hook line and sinker. They didn't question the other age brackets or have any skepticism, because they liked what the poll showed.

An alternative explanation I heard (might have actually been somewhere on here) is that the seniors who answered polls were disproportionately Democratic/anti-Trump because they were the ones who were more likely to stay home out of virus fear.

[ilikeverin]

If the exit poll is right, Trump won seniors by 5. That's a 32 point error!! Senior samples have tended to skew female and that's why they are more Dem than they end up being, and that's been a problem for a while, but I don't even think response bias can fully explain this.

There was obviously an effort on the part of the media to scare seniors into voting Democrat by blaming Trump for the pandemic. Part of it I think was insane social desirability bias when it came to topics regarding the pandemic. Anybody who wanted the economy open or their schools open was accused of putting money before lives (despite other evidence that closing the economy lead to an unprecedented amount of suicides and overdoses, but we'll ignore that). They were scapegoated as not taking the pandemic seriously, not following the "experts" (you don't want to be against the experts do you?). I think this hit the hardest against seniors because they consume by far the most amount of cable and network news.

The other explanation I can resort to (but don't want to) is that it was something the overwhelming amount of Democrats (and therefore pollsters) wanted to happen, so they made it true in their polls. Then it became a consensus that seniors were abandoning Trump.

But regardless, the blue wave pushers ate it up. They believed it hook line and sinker. They didn't question the other age brackets or have any skepticism, because they liked what the poll showed.

An alternative explanation I heard (might have actually been somewhere on here) is that the seniors who answered polls were disproportionately Democratic/anti-Trump because they were the ones who were more likely to stay home out of virus fear.

Yeah, this to me is precisely the datapoint that would support that idea. Even many anti-Trump young folks were probably out and about at the time this poll was conducted. But any anti-Trump seniors were probably staying at home terrified, driving their response rates up. Similarly, the biggest polling errors by state were generally in states where cases were at their highest in late October.