presidential candidates

The “Senior Vote” — Are They Talking About Me?

Posted on 04/20/2012 by Election 2012 | Politics | Comments

Bulletin Today | PoliticsIt bugs me when marketers refer to “the over-50 crowd.” Whether hawking online dating services or warning about the dangers of STDs, they seem to see us as one huge lump of aging humanity. It feels like we disappear as individuals. Sure, I’m over 50, but that isn’t top of mind as I go about my day. There’s a similar tendency to stereotype American voters during election season, Dante Chinni, a journalist who directs the Patchwork Nation project at the …

Santorum — For Whom the Bellwether Tolled

Posted on 04/10/2012 by Election 2012 | Politics | Comments

Bulletin Today | PoliticsAs older Republican primary voters go, so went Rick Santorum’s presidential campaign. Santorum, who suspended his campaign Tuesday by conceding the “race for us is over,” did well in primary states only when he did well among voters 50 and older — especially voters on the cusp of retirement age. According to the exit polls, Santorum’s finishes in individual primaries almost always mirrored how he did among voters aged 50 to 64. He took his biggest shares of 50- to …

Is the Grand Old Party Growing Older?

Posted on 04/7/2012 by Election 2012 | Politics | Comments

Bulletin Today | PoliticsRepublican primary voters are getting older. And it’s not just because, like the rest of us, they’ve aged four years since the last presidential election. The proportion of GOP primary voters who are 50 and older has gotten substantially bigger since 2008, according to exit polls in the states that have held primaries so far, even as overall turnout has dropped. In many cases, the increases have been in the double digits, showing a dramatic rise in the influence of …

As Voters Age, Does the Gender Gap Shrink?

Posted on 04/4/2012 by Election 2012 | Politics | Comments

Bulletin Today | PoliticsThe latest meme from the campaign trail is the gender gap. This week, just about everyone — from CNN and the Christian Science Monitor to the Huffington Post and Salon — has been reporting that women are more likely than men to favor a Democrat over a Republican in the 2012 election. It’s a familiar story: Women have favored Democratic candidates for at least three decades. The news seems to be that there’s some evidence of a bigger gender gap than …

With Older GOP Voters Behind Him, Romney Goes Three for Three

Posted on 04/4/2012 by Election 2012 | Politics | Comments

Bulletin Today | PoliticsMitt Romney swept the primaries in Wisconsin, Maryland and the District of Columbia — and he has older voters to thank for it. In both Wisconsin and Maryland, voters age 50 and older made up a bigger share of the GOP primary electorate than they did in 2008. And exit polls in both states (no exit polling was done in the D.C., where Rick Santorum wasn’t even on the ballot) indicate that the older the voter, the more likely they …

The End Is Near . . . Again

Posted on 03/27/2012 by Election 2012 | Politics | Comments

Bulletin Today | PoliticsIf you’re running President Obama’s re-election campaign and you want to test how certain themes will play in Peoria, what to do? Turn to your pollsters? Convene focus groups? Test your message before a friendly audience? All of the above, probably. But if you’re smart, you won’t have your candidate do the on-the-ground testing. You’ll have a surrogate do it. That way, you can smooth out any rough edges — either in how the message is delivered or how it …