How ‘All in the Family’ Explains Biden’s Strength Among Seniors

Yesterday’s hippies have become today’s seniors — and they’re still voting Democratic.

It’s usually a given that Republicans will win voters 65 and over, but that’s not the case in this election. Instead, polls show President Biden close or even ahead among seniors, continuing a steady — and overlooked — trend of Democratic gains among older voters.

Mr. Biden’s strength among seniors might be surprising, but the likeliest explanation is deceptively simple: At every stage earlier in their lives, many of today’s seniors voted Democratic. They just got older.

To understand why, consider Archie Bunker, the working-class “lovable bigot” from the 1970s hit sitcom “All in the Family,” and his TV family.

The show revolves around Archie’s feuds with his 20-something feminist daughter, Gloria, and his liberal son-in-law, Michael, over race, gender and politics. (The existence of a 30-minute-long YouTube video called “Racist Archie Bunker Compilation” — which has nearly two million views — tells you most of what you need to know about the show and his character.)

It’s not unreasonable if Archie is your image of an older voter. As recently as 15 years ago, every single voter over age 65 was born before the end of World War II and came of age before the cultural revolution of the 1960s that shaped the views of many baby boomers voters for a lifetime.

Archie’s generation was the only one that responded to the 2008 nomination of Barack Obama by shifting right: A higher share of them voted for John McCain in 2008 than for George W. Bush in 2004.

But in 2024, Archie shouldn’t be your image of a senior. Archie would be 100 years old today; his generation, called the Greatest Generation, has almost entirely died. The generation that came after Archie’s — the conservative Silent Generation, who grew up during the popular Eisenhower dominance in the “Leave It to Beaver” 1950s — has mostly died, too. Just 20 percent of the Silent Generation is alive today.

Instead, you may be better off thinking of Michael and Gloria. They are boomers, and they would be in their 70s today.

As a result, today’s seniors bear little resemblance to those from 10 or 15 years ago. Today, Madonna is a senior. So are Ellen DeGeneres and Katie Couric. By Election Day, Magic Johnson will be 65. Even though they may not feel like older voters to you, these boomers are the new seniors.

All together, boomers will make up more than 70 percent of seniors in 2024, up from zero percent when Mr. Obama — himself a baby boomer — won the presidency in 2008.

Boomers have a reputation for being conservative, but they’re more liberal than the older voters than them. The aging of the boomers, along with the dwindling ranks of those even older than the boomers, helps explain the steady Democratic gains among seniors over the last decade.In 2012, Republican strength among seniors was at its peak: Mr. Romney won seniors by nearly 10 percentage points. But in all likelihood, Mr. Obama won the voters who are seniors today.

Voters aged 53 to 64 in 2012 — those 65 to 76 today — backed Mr. Obama by three points, based on a large compilation of survey data. As a group, they will have canceled much of Mr. Romney’s lead among those 65 and over.

At the same time, millions more conservative voters from older generations have died. Those who remain are disproportionately women and college graduates, and may be somewhat less Republican.

Consider the character Mary Richards, from “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.”

The fictional Mary was born in 1940 and represents the new possibilities for women at work and in society. Mary, who went on to get a master’s degree, would be 84 today and might be expected to be a Democratic voter. Many men of her generation, especially those without college degrees, didn’t make it to that age: Just 21 percent of 84-year-olds in 2022 were white men without degrees, according to census data.

American women live almost six years longer than men on average, and college graduates live about eight years longer than those without a degree.

Of course, just because Mr. Obama most likely won today’s seniors doesn’t mean President Biden will do so. But in the last presidential election, Mr. Biden won 48 percent of seniors, a tally almost identical to our estimate of how Mr. Obama probably fared among the same voters. The simple explanation is that compositional change, rather than a change in attitude, has been driving Democratic gains.

Over the last four years, the last cohort of relatively Democratic boomers became seniors (the youngest boomers are more politically like Gen X and haven’t hit 65 yet). It’s entirely possible that Mr. Biden won today’s seniors in 2020. If so, Mr. Biden may not need to flip a single voter to turn seniors from red to blue in 2024.