The Democratic camp is banking on the elderly electorate, who according to various opinion surveys are more tempted to vote for the outgoing president than for Donald Trump.
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Joe Biden, 81, is trying to appeal to senior voters. His team has just launched the “Seniors for Biden-Harris” program, “seniors for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris”. The idea is to mobilize voters over 65 throughout the country, but especially in Estates where the November vote will be close.
The Biden camp plans to organize several events for seniors in the coming days, for example with a pickleball tournament in Virginia, this mini-tennis played with a plastic ball on a small court. A bingo evening was organized in Arizona, another key state in the presidential election, a pancake breakfast in Georgia or a telephone donation drive with Doug Emhoff in New Hampshire.
To reach as many elderly people as possible, candidate Biden’s entourage plans to invest in campaign clips broadcast during the television shows they generally watch, such as “Good morning America” on ABC or “Today” on NBC, and during game shows like “The Price is Right” or “Wheel of Fortune.”
If Joe Biden is courting older voters, it is not because he himself is 81 years old, his opponent Donald Trump being 78 years old. The outgoing president is investing in seniors first because they are a voting group that consistently votes more than all other demographic groups. And because the Republicans have won the vote of the elderly in every presidential election for half a century, except in 1992, 1996 and 2000.
Biden also flirts with older people because recent polls show that they are more tempted by him than by Trump, perhaps because they are “old school” and respect institutions more and because they have little taste for unorthodox style of the Republican billionaire. The latest Siena College survey for the New York Times shows that Biden has a 9-point lead over Trump among those over 65.
These senior voters are more committed to preserving the democracy that Biden embodies. In a recent survey on the most pressing issue facing the country, 10% of voters aged 18 to 34 answered “democracy”, while among those aged 65 and over the figure was 35%. More than any other subject, including the economy and immigration.