{"id":4064,"date":"2020-09-23T08:43:22","date_gmt":"2020-09-23T08:43:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/9thstreetjournal.org\/?p=4064"},"modified":"2023-08-17T15:47:07","modified_gmt":"2023-08-17T15:47:07","slug":"republicans-need-senior-voters-but-trump-is-pushing-them-away","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/9thstreetjournal.org\/2020\/09\/23\/republicans-need-senior-voters-but-trump-is-pushing-them-away\/","title":{"rendered":"Republicans need senior voters, but Trump is pushing them away"},"content":{"rendered":"
House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy has good reason to worry about senior voters in North Carolina.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n McCarthy <\/span>told Axios<\/span><\/a> that he spent hours telling President Trump his <\/span>unfounded attacks on mail-in voting<\/span><\/a> could not only doom the president\u2019s re-election, but also imperil Republicans running for Congress.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The House Minority Leader said that he\u2019s particularly concerned about losing the senior vote, which <\/span>historically leans right<\/span><\/a>. \u201cI tried to show [Trump] \u2026 you know who is most afraid of COVID? Seniors. And if they\u2019re not going to go vote, period, we\u2019re screwed,\u201d McCarthy said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n A new 9th Street Journal tally of absentee ballot requests from the North Carolina Board of Elections shows why McCarthy is so concerned. Democratic voters older than 65 have requested nearly twice as many ballots (13,319) as their Republican counterparts (7,007), according to the data available on Sept. 14.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The numbers also show that Republicans account for 36% of the state\u2019s voters who are older than 65, but only 23% of the absentee ballot requests for that age group. Meanwhile, Democrats represent 40% of the state\u2019s senior voters and 44% of voters older than 65 who have requested ballots.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Unaffiliated senior voters, who account for 24% of all senior voters, have requested 32% of the ballots.<\/span><\/p>\n As McCarthy feared, Trump\u2019s <\/span>repeated<\/span><\/a> attacks<\/span><\/a> on mail-in voting seem to be having an impact \u2014 particularly with Republicans. A <\/span>WRAL poll<\/span><\/a> last week found a third of likely North Carolina voters have little to no confidence that votes cast by mail will be counted correctly. The sentiment varied by party: While 42% of Republicans and and 39% of Independents said that they had little to no confidence in the mail-in voting process, only 28% of Democrats felt the same way.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Republicans usually depend on senior voters, who voted <\/span>55% to 42%<\/span><\/a> for Trump over Hillary Clinton in 2016.<\/span><\/p>\n People over the age of 65 make up 23% of the statewide electorate. In the <\/span>2016<\/span><\/a> and <\/span>2018<\/span><\/a> elections, they had the highest voter turnout compared with other age groups.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n