Two things are traditionally true about older voters: they turn out more reliably than younger voters, and they lean Republican.
But this year, a significant gender gap has emerged among older voters. In a recent Michigan poll by AARP, women over 50 favored Vice President Harris by 12 points, while former President Donald Trump won men by 17 points.
In a Pennsylvania AARP poll, Trump again won men over 50 by 17 points, but women over 50 were dead even.
One reason for the disparity: While men and women 50 and older both say economic issues are most important to them, women over 50 are more likely to say they trust Harris as much or more than Trump on the economy, says pollster Kristin Soltis Anderson.
“Not just about who's going to make your grocery bill lower, but also these women are thinking about long-term economic stability type questions,” Soltis Anderson said. “Who is going to make it so that I can retire when I thought I'd be able to?”
“I think it's because of that that you've seen Kamala Harris pull up closer to Donald Trump in the fight for who wins on the economy,” she added.
Also driving the gender gap is reproductive rights.
“Older women were the ones that had to fight like crazy to get reproductive rights,” said University of South Florida political scientist Susan MacManus. “They do not want to see any retrogression on the reproductive rights front whatsoever.”
That’s the reason 80-year-old Gale Siegel chose to vote for Harris.
“I marched for all the women's rights, ERA [Equal Rights Amendment] with my children and it looks like here I am, in this year, 2024, doing that again,” Siegel said at a Bethlehem, Pa., rally.
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