While browsing through endless exit poll results to fuel my statistics addiction, I noticed something odd. In nearly every state, it's well known that the elderly are more Republican than the, well, not elderly. There's usually a pretty strong correlation between age and percentage of the population that votes Republican, and this is true in both the blue states and the red states.
But not in Texas: the 60+ vote in Texas was by a huge margin much more pro-Kerry than the rest of the population.
Texas went for Bush 61-38 overall. The numbers for particular age groups, listed Bush-Kerry, with change in the Kerry vote percentage listed in parentheses:
18-29 (20% of voters): 61-39 (+1)
30-44 (29% of voters): 68-31 (-7)
45-59 (34% of voters): 62-37 (-1)
60+ (17% of voters): 50-50 (+12)
What does this mean? I can't think of any good explanations. People have suggested that elderly southerners might be more used to being lifelong Democrats, and the really elderly ones might even be old New Deal Democrats from the dustbowl era. But that wouldn't explain why you don't see the same thing across the rest of the south: only Texas shows numbers like this. Is there something different about the makeup of Texas's elderly population?