If Donald Trump loses Florida, it's all over but the epic celebrations. He has no path to winning the Electoral College without the delegate-rich state, which makes his sudden downturn among older voters particularly relevant.
In 2016, Trump won voters 65 and over by 7 points at the national level, but in the Sunshine State, Trump won the demographic by 17 points, according to exit polls. But as the Washington Post points out, a Quinnipiac poll of Florida late last month showed the voting bloc favoring Democratic rival Joe Biden by 10 points over Trump, 52%-42%. If that trend were to hold true in November, it would represent a nearly 30-point swing toward Democrats from 2016.
Seventy-four-year-old Allen Lehner, who retired to Florida from Pennsylvania, is exactly the type of voter who could make a difference. A former Republican, Lehner refused to vote for both Trump and Hillary Clinton in 2016, so he sat out the election instead. But this year, the self-identified independent plans to vote for Biden after watching Trump's total lack of leadership during the pandemic. He's worried about his own health along with the well-being of his adult children from both a health and an economic perspective.
“Regardless of what they say about [Biden's] senior moments, I think he would be good and take good care of the country,” Lehner, who lives in a gated community in Delray Beach, told the Post.
But Florida isn't the only swing state where older voters could prove decisive and could also more than make up for any younger voters Democrats worry about motivating to the polls. A similar dynamic could play out in Arizona, where 65 and older voters represented a quarter of all voters in exit polls and Trump won them by 13 points; Michigan, where the bloc was 19% of all voters and Trump took them by 4 points; Pennsylvania, where older voters were 21% of the voting public and Trump won them by 10 points; and Wisconsin, where older voters were 20% of all voters and won them by 1 point.
National polls in the last several months have continued to find voters 65 and older turning against Trump in significant numbers, particularly older white independents such as Lehner. Democrats have taken note and, in some cases, are teaching these voters how to make sure they can participate safely in the upcoming election.
“We have the ability to sway this election,” Florida Democratic Party Chairwoman Terrie Rizzo told fellow seniors earlier this month in an online town hall in which she reviewed instructions on how to vote by mail. Florida residents over 65 have made up more than 80% of COVID-19 related deaths in the state, according to the Tampa Bay Times.
Even some Trump loyalists have grown frustrated by Trump's failure to come up with a testing and tracing strategy. “We are clearly highly susceptible,” said 80-year-old David Israel, who lives in a retirement community in West Palm Beach. “We’re missing testing, and we’re missing contact tracing. We need to see that.” Israel still favors Trump over Biden, crediting him with taking care of the economy. But he still doesn't see how the country can return to work without a national testing/tracing program. "Everybody should be tested,” Israel said. “I don’t see how else we’re going to get on top of this.”
Everybody is not going to get tested, however, because Trump has ensured that won't happen. In the meantime, Trump's failures are winning Biden converts and causing even some Trump loyalists to question him. One has to wonder what someone like Israel will do if Trump's rush to reopen without proper preparation actually backfires, dooming the economy for years rather than months.
Overall, the Post found the people they interviewed mostly broke along predictable lines: If they liked Trump pre-COVID, they're still defending him; if they didn't like Trump, they see lots of flaws in his so-called leadership during the pandemic. Florida Democrats say they haven't yet witnessed a decisive mass defection among older voters. But a mass defection also isn't necessary, since the state will be won on the margins—Trump prevailed in Florida by just over 1%. And the Post interviewed several former Republicans who sat out 2016 and either plan to vote for Biden this year or are weighing doing so. If Biden can win back 5% to 10% of older people who voted for Trump in 2016, Democrats think he could carry the state.
