In a world without Covid-19, Trump would be running a traditional Republican campaign, talking about tax cuts, national security, and immigration. In a November 2016 Pew poll, two-thirds of Republicans named illegal immigration and terrorism as “very important problems.” Alongside abortion, these are the traditional “red meat” issues that excite the white senior voters who make up the GOP base.
There is a reason Republicans keep falling back on these issues year after year. Older voters always turn out at much higher rates than younger voters. The GOP candidate has decisively won the senior vote in the past four presidential elections. Conversely, Democrats always rule the roost with younger voters. In 2018, Democrats didn’t even break even among voters over 50 — and they still decisively flipped the House of Representatives, because they won younger voters by an overwhelming margin. In other words, to stay nationally relevant, the GOP has had to keep winning the senior vote — by ever-larger margins.
In this pandemic year, however, the Republican base has lost its appetite for the traditional red-meat diet. Interest in immigration and terrorism has plummeted. China has become a slightly bigger issue, but most voters are not prioritizing foreign policy. Simply put, the economic crisis and Covid-19 have eclipsed everything else. Fully 55% of voters name the economy or health care as their top issue this year. Among Republicans, 40% say their top issue is the economy.
Trump’s instinct all along has been to prioritize the economy over public health, grumbling about social distancing and masks even after he himself got infected. That was why he resisted the early warnings about the pandemic, claiming that Covid-19 was no worse than the seasonal flu. “REOPEN OUR COUNTRY!” he tweeted on May 18. “OPEN THE SCHOOLS!!!” he tweeted on August 3. “We’re having record job growth and a booming stock market, but Joe would end it all and close it all down. Ridiculous!” he tweeted on August 25.
The polls show that it’s not a completely crazy strategy. First of all, it appeals to middle-aged voters, particularly older Gen Xers and younger boomers, who are still approaching retirement and care about the stability of the job market and their 401(k). Middle-aged voters overwhelmingly name the economy as their top issue, and they trust Trump over Biden to get the economy back on track. Many older voters also think Biden would make a bad economy even worse, perhaps because they expect him to raise taxes.
In other words, a large fraction of American seniors agrees with Trump’s argument that the economy needs to stay open, despite the public health risks. Perhaps surprisingly, senior voters are more likely than any other age group to approve strongly of Trump’s handling of the pandemic, and they are more than twice as likely as Gen Z and young millennials to say that a federal mask mandate would violate their civil liberties.
Yet by playing to his base, Trump has lost the median voter. Clear majorities of all voting-age groups think Joe Biden would handle the virus better than Trump. And for the 46% of seniors who strongly disapprove of Trump’s handling of the crisis, this is no small issue: To them, the president’s dismissive attitude toward testing and mask-wearing is terrifying.
October 21, 2020 at 12:32PM
https://gen.medium.com/the-intergenerational-alliance-that-could-send-trump-packing-in-14-charts-35cc8ee541c7
The Intergenerational Alliance That Could Send Trump Packing, in 14 Charts - GEN
https://news.google.com/search?q=Send&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
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