Purpose: In the 2008 presidential election, a majority of older persons voted for John McCain, the loser. The purposes of this report are to help illuminate why older voters were the only age-group that gave a majority to McCain and to delineate some ongoing issues in the analysis of older persons' voting behavior. Methods: Analysis was undertaken…

For several decades, candidates in U.S. presidential election campaigns have articulated policy issues designed to appeal to older Americans. However, exit-poll data have consistently shown that older people have distributed their votes among presidential candidates in roughly the same proportions as the electorate as a whole, favoring the winner…