Iowa AARP Forum Highlights Power of Senior Voters

WASHINGTON — As most of the Democratic presidential candidates gather in Davenport, Iowa, on Thursday for a forum sponsored by the Iowa AARP, they will be appealing to an eagerly sought group of voters — seniors.

Seniors may not be big financial donors in presidential politics, but they more than make up for it in two ways: they often volunteer for the work in the campaign trenches and, most importantly, they show up to vote in overwhelming numbers, in general elections as well as in caucuses and primaries.

No portion of the population votes more than older voters, said Curtis Gans, who, as director of the Center for the Study of the American Electorate at American University, has been tracking American voting trends for more than three decades.

In fact, in presidential elections, older voters vote at nearly twice the rate of younger voters, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. In the 2004 election, 72 percent of Americans ages 55 and older voted, compared to 47 percent of those 18 to 24 years old. They were a key part of President Bush's victory over Democratic rival John Kerry. Bush carried older voters, 53-46 percent, in his re-election in 2004.

In the 2008 general election, the two key battleground states of the last two presidential contests have large senior populations: Florida, with 2.9 million over the age of 65, second most in the country, and Ohio, with 1.5 million, sixth most among the 50 states.

(Texas is ranked fourth, with 2.1 million senior citizens, and Georgia is 13th, with 826,506 over 65, but neither is expected to be competitive in the 2008 general election, although older voters could play important roles in the Democratic and Republican primaries in those states.)

Consequently, the AARP has joined forces with the Business Roundtable and the Services Employees International Union (SEIU) under the banner "Divided We Fail" to engage the candidates of both parties in a vigorous discussion of the issues important to their members, starting with Thursday night's 90-minute forum for the Democratic candidates. A Republican forum is slated Oct. 25 in Sioux City, Iowa.

Throughout the summer, Divided We Fail has been polling AARP members likely to attend the Republican or Democratic caucuses in the states that kick off the presidential voting in January — Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina and Florida — to identify the issues critical to their members. Not surprisingly, nine in 10 say issues related to financial security, such as Social Security and pension protection, are tops, followed by nearly eight in 10 who say health care is their major concern.

"By and large, though, unless their interests (such as Social Security and Medicare) are threatened, senior voters are moved by the same issues that everybody else is," said Gans. "In a bad economy and what is perceived as a bad war in Iraq, those issues are going to override anything anybody says about Social Security or Medicare."

Even so, that does not prevent candidates from tailoring their messages to the concerns of senior voters. And among the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates, none has done it better than the front-runners, Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Rudy Giuliani, according to independent pollster John Zogby.

"Issues like experience, leadership, familiarity and competence are trumping change and hope among voters over 65," said Zogby, explaining the popularity of Clinton and Giuliani with senior voters.

Other experts disagree.

Polling in June by the Pew Research Center found, for example, that among Democrats, John Edwards has the highest percentage of support among voters 50 years old and over, at 55 percent, compared to 48 percent for Clinton and 41 percent for Barack Obama. Among Republicans, the favorite of the over 50 voters was the newest candidate, Fred Thompson, with 65 percent, followed by Mitt Romney, 61 percent; John McCain, 49 percent; and Giuliani, 46 percent.

"It's still very fluid," said Andy Kohut, the director of the Pew Research Center, who conducting a new survey this month.

But at the AARP's national convention in Boston in early September, Clinton made one of the most direct appeals to seniors, promising to fix Social Security's long-term finances without cutting benefits or raising the eligibility age, in contrast to chief rival Barack Obama. Earlier this year, Obama said "everything should be on the table" in fixing Social Security, including benefit cuts and tax increases.

"By attacking Obama on Social Security, she clearly bolstered her standing (with seniors)," said John Pitney, a noted professor of political science at Claremont McKenna College in California.

Obama is not planning to attend the Iowa AARP forum, which will be attended by 2,400 of Iowa's senior voters and will be carried live on Iowa Public Television. "We benefit greatly when we're out there meeting with voters at our own events," Obama campaign manager David Plouffe said in explaining Obama's absence from the forum.

Skipping the AARP forum may be a mistake for Obama, however.

"It's the older voters that go to the caucuses, and I think he's really passing up an opportunity to speak to those voters," said Dianne Bystrom, an Iowa State University political science professor with an expertise in debates and generational voting. "He may be positioning himself strategically to appeal to younger voters, but the key will be whether he can get those younger voters out on a cold winter night in January to caucus for three hours."

In 2004, a full 64 percent of Iowa caucus voters were 55 years of age or older. Moreover, in New Hampshire's primary, half of the voters are 55 or older. And in Florida, about one-fourth of the registered voters are 65 or older, but in a typical election, their influence increases, representing a third of the actual vote.