Democrats' Senior Problem

I talked pretty extensively with the Washington Times for a story they put out yesterday on how senior citizens are reacting to the health care battle and the overall impact that's having on the political landscape.

There are two issues for Democrats here, the biggest being that they're doing poorly with voters over 65 and the corollary being that those older voters make up a larger portion of the electorate in a midterm year than they do in a Presidential one.

We've polled in seven different states since mid-July and Barack Obama's approval rating with senior citizens is poor in all of them, ranging from a low of 37% to a high of 42%:

State	Obama Approval w/Seniors
Colorado	42
North Carolina	42
Arizona	40
New Jersey	40
Arkansas	38
Virginia	37
Louisiana	37

In a development that's probably related we find Democrats doing poorly with older voters in most of the 2010 races we've polled recently:

-In North Carolina Richard Burr leads the generic ballot overall by 7 points, while among seniors his margin is 14. Against six potential opponents he leads by 7-16 points with all voters, but by 10-22 with seniors.

-In Arkansas Blanche Lincoln trails Gilbert Baker and Curtis Coleman by 2 points and 1 respectively but with seniors those leads are 9 and 7 points for the Republicans.

-In Colorado Michael Bennet trailed Bob Beauprez by 3, led Ken Buck by 4, and had a 5 point advantage over Ryan Frazier. Among seniors he was down 10 points to Beauprez, 3 to Buck, and tied with Frazier. On the gubernatorial front Bill Ritter was down by 9 to Scott McInnis and tied with Josh Penry among all voters. With seniors it was a 17 point deficit to McInnis and a 6 point disadvantage against Penry.

-In Louisiana David Vitter led Charlie Melancon by 12 points overall and by 26 with voters over 65.

-On the generic Congressional ballot we found the GOP up 45-41 with all voters, buoyed largely by a 55-34 lead with senior citizens.

One thing to keep in mind with all of this is that seniors aren't a particularly good demographic for Democrats to begin with. Last year John McCain won them 53-45 nationally while losing by a pretty similar spread overall. But what makes it a bigger problem looking toward 2010 is that voters over 65 tend to make up a larger share of the electorate in midterms than they do in Presidential years, largely because they're more inclined to vote in all elections while younger voters and particularly those under 30 are more prone to only vote in the highest turnout ones. So they're a more powerful bloc next year than they were last year.

Seniors and independents are probably the two main groups Democrats are going to need to win over to hold their position next year. African Americans and young voters will be important too but that's more an issue of persuading them to turn out than persuading them to the party.