Seniors Are Turning Against The GOP

If there is an age group that has been pretty solidly Republican, it is those Americans over 65. In the 2010 election, seniors gave their votes to the GOP by a 21 point margin (59% to 38%). That's almost as big a margin as the Democrats have with young people, and what's better for Republicans, seniors always vote in large numbers (and with boomers now becoming seniors, those numbers are growing). Seniors even vote in off-year elections (when there is no presidential candidate). To say this is an important demographic for Republicans would be an understatement.

That makes it amazing to me that the Republicans in Congress have taken such an anti-senior path for the last few years. They have been trying to either privatize Social Security or cut its benefits since the administration of George W. Bush. And the budgets passed by the Republican-dominated House, both before and after the 2012 election, included a provision to abolish Medicare (putting seniors back under the non-existent mercy of the giant insurance companies). It almost seems like the Republicans are trying to rid themselves of senior voters.

And they might be succeeding at that. The folks over at Democracy Corps say the seniors are starting to turn against the Republicans, and they have some numbers from a recent survey of theirs to back that view. Back in January of 2011, seniors gave the Republicans an approval rating of 43%. Today, that approval rating from seniors has dropped to 28%. And the number of seniors who are willing to identify themselves as Republicans has also dropped (from 39% to 33%), while those who identify as Democrats has risen (from 29% to 39%).

And the views that many seniors have of the Republican Party is not positive. About 55% say the Republicans are too extreme, while 52% say they are both out-of-touch and dividing the country.

The Republicans are counting on the off-year 2014 election to be a good one for them -- a repeat of what happened in 2010. But to make they happen, they need to hang on to all of their senior voters. If they lose a significant portion of that vote, 2014 could turn into a disaster for them. And it looks like that may well happen.