President’s Day Question: Do Age Groups Vote as One?

In other words, do all Baby Boomers tend to vote for Baby Boomers?

There seems to be a clear generational component in the current Presidential elections this year. We have a range from John McCain in his 70s to Barak Obama in his 40s, with Hillary Clinton in between at 60. In this post from b5media blog “One Vote Matters,” Thursday Bram discusses her thoughts about this question. And the Mercury News (Silicon Valley newspaper) also discussed this topic recently.

If boomers vote for boomers, does that mean Hillary stands a better chance than other candidates, since there are so many of us? Or do we divide on political lines and cancel out each other’s votes?

You have probably heard a lot about the “youth vote” in this campaign.  As Thursday points out, the younger generations are coming back into the political system, and it’s always a good thing to have younger voters in the system.  It’s interesting to note from Thursday’s article that the younger voters feel Social Security is a “scam.”  We baby boomers have been sure for years that we would not get Social Security too, because we believed the system would implode before we got our money out of it.  Guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

In the long run, how people vote is less important than that they do.  I’m thrilled to see such an interesting race, because it pulls those younger voters in, and hopefully keeps them interested long enough to find their voice.

Happy President’s Day!