What happened with seniors this election?

[ElectionsGuy]

According to exit polls, voters aged 65+ voted for Trump by 5 points, being the most Republican of all age groups. This comes after months and months of polls and narrative building that Trump has collapsed among seniors, and they were turning to Biden in record numbers. Trump's botched coronavirus response alienated them because they don't like to die to put the economy first (a strawman, but that's what was said), so it only makes sense, right? If you were skeptical of this (like myself), you were called out as not believing the data. Not to mention, covid affects everybody in some way, not just seniors, many people in their 50's could be at risk as well.

But let's forget the exit poll for a second because they can be unreliable (and have been lately). If seniors did have a massive exodus from Trump, where would we see it? The oldest county in the country, Sumter County, FL right? Swung 3 points left of 2016, roughly in line with the national swing. Broadly, you would see it in rural America, because rural areas skew older. Only in the northeast were there decent Democratic swings in rural areas like New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine. I think that's attributed more to a large independent vote share there that was bound to be worse for Trump this time than 2016. Otherwise, many rural areas across the country got even redder or only slightly swung Democratic from 2016. We simply didn't see the kind of swings that certain polls all year long were projecting for seniors (and some simply weren't, some polls that did show Biden winning seniors also showed absurdly Republican numbers for 30-44 and 45-64).

Do we have any ideas why? Why did some of these polls get this so wrong, and even putting that aside why did seniors still vote for Trump after the covid response?

[Alben Barkley]

It’s too early to reach any conclusions based on exit polls, especially because different exit polls had wildly different numbers. (e.g. Trump winning college white women by 1 according to one, losing them by 30 according to another.) Wait until they are adjusted to match precinct data.

It is already clear however that seniors at least swung against Trump from last time, if not to the extent polls predicted, and that Biden probably did better with them than any Democrat since Gore.

[Skill and Chance]

IMO it goes something like this: Retired Democrats more or less cancelled all their social plans for the year.  Retired Republicans more or less resumed their normal schedules by June.  The former were bored and lonely and dramatically more likely to answer the phone to a stranger/robot than the latter.


I also wonder if long term unemployed service employees (much more Dem than other working class voters) answered the phone disproportionately enough to skew polls of young/low income people too Democratic?