CNN —
We’ve heard a lot about the groups of voters that Kamala Harris seems to be struggling with, or at least that Joe Biden didn’t do well with them four years ago. Still, the vice president has a slight national advantage over Donald Trump. How is that possible?
Harris has proven to be doing particularly well as a Democrat in a group that has had poor relations with recent presidential candidates from her party.
One such group is the elderly. Harris could become the first Democrat since Al Gore in 2000 to support voters over 65.
Take a look at recent national opinion polls. A CNN/SSRS poll this week found Harris leading the former president 50% to 46% among seniors. Our study is not an outlier. The average poll shows Ms. Harris leading Mr. Trump by 3 points among seniors.
This is a marked improvement from before Biden dropped out of the race in July and compared to the final estimates for 2020. Both polling averages from earlier this year and post-election polls in 2020 showed Mr. Trump leading Mr. Biden by 4 percentage points among likely voters. He was over 65 years old.
The fact that Ms. Harris has done better with older people than other previous Democrats is not the biggest surprise. Biden did significantly better with older voters in 2020 than Barack Obama did in 2012, despite similar performance nationally among all voters.
Still, winning over older voters would come at a time of need for Harris, who has struggled a bit — for a Democrat — among younger voters in average national polls. .
Neither side wants to lose voters, but trading younger voters for older voters could potentially be a good outcome for Ms. Harris. There are more elderly people in the United States than adults under 30.
Additionally, older Americans punch above their weight because they are more likely to register and vote. A recent poll by The New York Times and Siena College found that older adults make up about 29% of voters, compared to about 13% of voters under 30.
Although the exact calculations vary by state, the general idea that older voters make up a much larger share of the electorate than younger voters holds true even in battleground states.
And the power of older voting districts compared to the youngest ones only increases. For example, the U.S. Census Bureau estimates that in 1980, 22% of eligible voters were under 30, while only 17% were older. By 2000, a larger proportion of people were older than those under 30 years of age (20%).
Of course, pre-election polls may not be accurate. Four years ago, there were signs that older voters were leaning more toward Democrats. Although the margin was narrower than expected given the nationwide vote difference, Trump will likely continue to win.
But polls from four years ago suggested Mr. Biden was doing better than the average Democrat even among young voters, a far cry from now. But as it turned out, the polls overestimated Biden’s standing among most voter groups.
Interestingly, this potential age depolarization between the oldest and youngest voters occurs at a time when we also see racial depolarization. Just as Ms. Harris is performing better than Mr. Biden among white voters, Mr. Trump is performing better among Republicans among black and Hispanic voters.
I mention racial depolarization because the calculus is similar for Harris. As with age groups, she appears to be losing support among smaller groups of voters (black and Hispanic voters) and gaining support among larger groups (white voters).
This tradeoff is currently working out well for Harris in the polls. The question is: Will it continue to work for her, or will Trump’s gains among younger, black and Hispanic voters overwhelm the gains Harris has made with white and older voters? I mean, is it?
Regardless of what ultimately happens, it seems very likely that we will see an electorate that is less divided among certain key demographics than we are used to seeing.
