Voter generation gap pits old against young
Thu Oct 9, 2008 7:21pm EDT
By Jane Sutton

MIAMI BEACH, Florida (Reuters) - America's oldest citizens, who traditionally wield outsized electoral clout because they vote in the greatest numbers, are backing John McCain by nearly the same margin that the youngest voters favor Barack Obama.

Pollsters call it the biggest generation gap in decades and it's all the more striking because voters in every age group agree overwhelmingly the economy is the top issue in the November 4 election to choose President George W. Bush's successor.

"It's certainly not anything like ever happened before," said pollster John Zogby.

Most polls put Obama a few points ahead of McCain overall. But Zogby's early October polling showed Republican nominee McCain with a 21-point lead over Democratic nominee Obama among likely voters 65 and older. Among likely voters aged 18 to 29, Obama held a 21-point lead.

Older voters have been leaning more Republican since 2000, and demographics are partly at play. Voters who grew up with President Franklin Roosevelt's "New Deal" economic recovery and social reform programs in the 1930s are dying off.

"Older people now include the Cold War, Korean War, '50s generation," Zogby said. "They're more conservative than the New Deal generation."

Race counts against Obama for some older voters, he said.

"They are the least ready, they say, for an African American president so that kind of shaves a few more points off the Democratic column," Zogby said. Obama is the first black presidential candidate of a major U.S. party.

But even among older whites, "Attitudes toward race are not as important as the generational differences," said pollster Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center.

McCain, 72, a former Navy pilot and Vietnam prisoner of war who has served in Congress since 1982, would be the oldest president ever to start a first term. Obama, 47, a first-term U.S. senator who taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago, would be one of the youngest.

"While Obama leads in the economy in most tests of who you have more confidence in, older voters are more wary of his lack of experience than are younger voters. They also have a better opinion of John McCain," said Kohut.

Arenas, a 72-year-old Republican who declined to give her full name while shopping on Miami Beach, thinks McCain's military background makes him better able to protect America.

"McCain is stronger than Obama," she said.

Dick Sturm, 75, a retired accountant who drives a guest shuttle at Walt Disney World, said he has concerns about Obama's relative inexperience in Washington.

"John McCain is not promising the world. Obama is promising a lot of stuff he cannot deliver and frankly I just don't trust him," said Sturm, who has a McCain campaign sign in his yard.

People 65 and older make up 12.4 percent of the U.S. population but cast nearly 20 percent of the ballots in recent elections. In the 2004 presidential race, 72 percent of them voted, compared with only 47 percent of those aged 18 to 24, the U.S. Census Bureau said.

Younger voters' strong participation in the presidential primary elections suggests this could be the year their turnout rivals that of their grandparents.

That divide is stark in retiree-rich Florida, America's grayest state where one in six residents is over age 65.

In a video circulating on the Internet, comedian Sarah Silverman urged young Jews to go to Florida to persuade their retired grandparents to vote for Obama, with the threat of boycotting future visits if they vote for McCain.

Comedian Jackie Mason, 77, countered with a video rejecting the notion that bigotry prevents those grandparents from supporting Obama. "The fact that he accomplished nothing is the reason you're not voting for him," Mason said.

Manuel Meles, 74, is weighing McCain's experience against his choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as a running mate.

"McCain has experience but I don't trust that woman he picked for vice president. The other one is very brilliant but he's young," said Meles, who works in a Miami Beach shoe store and wants to watch the final presidential debate before deciding who gets his vote.

Experience also counts for Al Mansfield, a U.S. Coast Guard retiree who used 401K money to buy an amphibious bus-boat and launch a Florida sightseeing business, Polly Trolly.

"I would like to have seen a McCain-Biden ticket," said Mansfield, referring to Obama's 65-year-old vice presidential pick, Sen. Joe Biden. "Taxwise for a business, I think we are in trouble with Obama but McCain's not doing the health care."

But Julio Salgueiro, an 82-year-old artist retired from a career designing displays for New York department stores, is outraged that his tax dollars will bail out investors "who have made disappear by magic $700 billion dollars." He thinks Obama's rise from humble beginnings makes him a better advocate for those earning less than $250,000 a year.

"Republicans are the party of the rich people," Havana-born Salgueiro said. "Obama will be my next president."

(Additional reporting by Barbara Liston; editing by David Wiessler)