According to data from the Roper Center at Cornell University, 50 percent of U.S. seniors — those who are 65 or older — voted for Donald Trump in 2024 compared to 49 percent for Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris. The senior vote was close in 2024, and seniors, Roper says, played an important role in getting Trump past the finish line. But according to Salon’s Heather Digby Parton, seniors could be the ones who doom Republicans in the 2026 midterms.
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Parton notes that because so many seniors vote GOP, “it’s always been a mystery” to her “why Republicans have always been so bent on destroying the safety net that brought the elderly out of poverty and assured them a baseline level of subsistence and medical care.” And she points that crucial safety-net programs used by seniors — Social Security and Medicare — came from liberal Democratic presidents.
“From the moment Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act in 1935 to the day Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Medicare and Medicaid Act 30 years later,” Parton explains, “the right has been trying to destroy them. In the early days, it sprang from their obsession with anti-communism, arguments that the country couldn’t afford it, and that individuals and their families are rightfully responsible for their own care in old age. In a 1961 radio address — 20 years before he became president — Ronald Reagan said, ‘One of the traditional methods of imposing statism or socialism on a people has been by way of medicine’ … Before Medicare was created, only 54 percent of elderly people had health insurance, and that could be cancelled without cause when they got sick — which, as you know, tends to happen when you get old.”
Parton continues, “Three years after it was enacted, 96 percent of people over 65 had hospital insurance. It was literally a life saver. Over the years, Medicaid, created at the same time to assist people living below the poverty line, came to cover many of the health expenses that Medicare didn’t for elderly people, most importantly for nursing homes and caregivers. The GOP has been hacking away at these vital programs ever since, and yet, senior citizens have been voting for them in greater numbers than any other age cohort.”
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The Salon journalist stresses, however, that seniors could rebel against Republicans in a big way if they think the Trump administration is hurting Social Security and Medicare.
“The Republican war on the elderly has taken an even darker — and potentially painful and even deadly — turn, and not just for seniors below the poverty line,” Parton observes. “Trump’s immigration policies are drastically shrinking the pool of workers who care for the elderly in assisted-living facilities and in their own homes … This could well be an issue that cuts across party lines.”
Parton continues, “Any older person who is told that their caregiver is being deported because of Trump’s policies could likewise be angry and appalled … There are a lot of seniors, and they vote. Republicans should think long and hard about making these people their adversaries.”
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