Fewer Younger, More Older Voters
MSNBC writes:
NEW YORK — A deeply pessimistic electorate — and one skewed to older voters — showed up to vote this year, according to exit poll interviews.
In early exit poll data, 62 percent of voters said the economy was the most important issue facing the country and 56 percent said the country is on the wrong track.
With 14.8 million unemployed – 4.5 million more than on Election Day 2008 – it wasn’t surprising that the economy was the dominant issue in the election.
Nearly nine in 10 voters said the state of the economy was not good. And nearly 90 percent of voters were also pessimistic about the nation’s economic future.
Early exit poll data also suggested that the 2010 electorate was turning out to be significantly older and more conservative than in previous elections.
The data indicated that a remarkable 25 percent of the electorate was age 65 and over – a big jump from the 2008 election when only 15 percent of the electorate was age 65 and over.
And the early data also suggested that younger voters were not responding to urgent pleas from Obama and Democratic leaders to vote in the way they had in 2008.
