President Joe Biden’s campaign is escalating its outreach to senior citizens in a maneuver to flip a voting group that usually votes Republican.
Those outreach efforts include bingo games organized by volunteers in swing states and running ads during shows favored by older voters like the Price is Right.
Voters 65 and older have historically supported Republicans in the last two election cycles, but former President Donald Trump saw older voters’ support decrease from 2016 to 2020. A recent poll indicated Biden, who is four years older than Trump at 81, is leading Trump among older voters, 51% to 42%.
Voters 65 and older comprised 30.4% of the electorate in 2022. It’s also a demographic known to be more likely to vote.
“It’s a major turning point,” Biden pollster Celinda Lake told Bloomberg. “It’s really an inverse of the previous patterns, where Democrats traditionally do better with younger voters and have had trouble with seniors.”
Part of that shift may be because of Trump’s inconsistent messaging on Social Security or Medicare, which senior voters value. He said in March that “there’s a lot you can do in terms of entitlements, in terms of cutting,” before backtracking to say he would never “jeopardize or hurt Social Security and Medicare.”
Voters polled in seven swing-states favored Biden over Trump 45% to 39% for Social Security and Medicare’s preservation.
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Florida, a critical swing state that Trump carried in 2016 and 2020, is known for having a significant percentage of 65 and older residents. If older voters favor Biden there, it could have a significant affect on who claims the state’s 30 electoral votes.
Trump leads Biden by just 0.6% in national average polling on May 11, his lowest lead since a 0.4% mark on April 25.
