Why Older Voters Choose Donald Trump

In the waning days of this bitter presidential campaign, while candidates slog it out in a final mud bath of vitriol, let’s go back to how it all began—or at least how we think it all began.

Several attempts were made, during the early phase of the campaign, to identify the average supporters of Donald Trump; to focus on their similarities, and to discover why they attended his rallies in the thousands to listen to his enraged rhetoric.

Analysts had a field day examining the underlying conditions which may have spurred such a ground swell of social expression, a ‘movement’ as Trump slyly and accurately named it as early as last spring.

-It was the stagnant economy, some said, and the typical supporter hadn’t seen a raise in decades.
-There were no new jobs, and they were tired of companies shipping their jobs overseas to China.
-It was illegal Mexicans coming across the border, and taking over the country.
-No, it was the influx of Syrian refugees sucking the economy dry, others guessed.
Or it was a combination of some or all of these things.

Maybe it wasn’t just the economy

It’s true that Trump tapped into the root cause of the problem: Decades of government policies of free trade and corporate globalism closed factories and gutted cities. A tour of any of the cities in America’s Rust Belt: Chicago, Detroit, Flint, would confirm that.

A few months ago, Anthony Mirhaydari of the Fiscal Times observed:

“Trump’s rise is about his unique grasp of the most fundamental economic issue that’s been hurting regular American workers for decades: the influx of foreign workers and the outflow of corporate capital expenditures that have reduced wage-raising bargaining power.”

But as the campaign wore on, Trump opened up other festering sores. The issues of the economy gave way to a more cultural battle involving Syrian refugees, ISIS, and the political elitism that shut him out . Trump lost the thread of his initial argument, peppering his daily attacks on his opponent with disinformation and character assassination. An examination of his speeches, and his past behavior, revealed a personality rife with misogynistic and racial overtones, and an obvious lack of self examination.

Yet none of his invective of the past few months deterred his supporters—they have stuck with him, and even increased their ranks.

Who are these people, and why do they show up?

Trump may have directed his initial arguments to the prime-aged white working man, displaced by foreign workers and ignored by decades of elitist governments, but on closer examination of the people at his rallies, his campaign has actually been supported mostly by the elderly.

In an October 25 article in the Atlantic Times, reporter Molly Ball outlines why:

“Someone who is 70 today was born in 1946 and grew up in the Beaver Cleaver world of the 1950s, an anomalous period of time in America when the postwar economy was booming and the dominant culture had not yet been disrupted by the civil-rights movement and the sexual revolution. Today’s old people are the last Americans who will ever remember that bygone country—and they see the current election as their last chance to restore it.”

Younger people who feel the election is threatened by this wave of older voters have a right to be concerned. The population of older people is large, and because they always vote, they have far more influence in politics than any other group.
Sincere and well meaning, they say they’re voting to preserve their grand-children’s futures, but they don’t see that their vision of the future is skewed by the realities of their own relatively ‘safe’ lives. They don’t understand a future in which jobs will be affected more by automation than by the advent of migrants, in which college education is unaffordable, in which buying a home is no longer possible, and in which social benefits have been erased by the expedience of contract work and the gig economy.

Not all older people think the same way

But it is cruel and unfair to group all older voters together, to say they are all shortsighted and at odds with the rest of society—that would be stereotypical and ageist, and just not true. Millions of older people today lead relevant lives, fully in step with modern society and technological change.

Yet this campaign has put a spotlight on a major section of older adults—those who seem to live in a world apart. They seem alienated from younger generations, not able to communicate in a new language they scarcely recognize­—so when a demagogue comes along, who promises that he alone can put it all back the way it was, well of course, they want to believe him.