Column: Harris or Trump? The outcome could be in the hands of voters 65 and older

At the 11th hour, in which the Day of the Dead will be followed by the Day of Dread, the outcome of the presidential election is a toss-up. But if you want to risk the nest egg on something, here’s a safe bet:

Voter turnout will be greater in the rapidly growing 65-and-older age group than in any other. That’s the way it’s been since 1988, and it’s not likely to change next week. In 2020, 72% of registered seniors voted, compared with the national average of 62% for all age groups, with a turnout of just 48% for voters 18 to 24 years old.

In other words, my age group could well determine the outcome between former President Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.

So how are we leaning?

There’s no easy answer, despite polls and headlines that suggest otherwise.

A CNN story said that Harris “may be the first Democratic nominee to win seniors since Al Gore,” citing a September poll that gave her a 50%-46% advantage. A New York Times/Siena poll had Harris up by 2 points over Trump among seniors in early October after trailing him the previous month.

“We may end up remembering 2024 as the year the gerontocracy voted itself out of office,” said the New Republic.

But have you ever gotten a sunny forecast on your weather app, then looked out the window to see rain falling? Polls can be just as flighty, and in fact, a Pew Research Center poll in early October gave Trump a 51%-47% lead among seniors, concluding that “Trump is favored among older voters and men; Harris performs better among younger voters, women.”

So I reached out directly to older voters to see how they size things up, beginning with a Trump supporter I used to meet with once a year, to find out if he was still standing by his man. Dana Martin, 70, has left California for Idaho since we last spoke, and told me his neighborhood — in a Boise suburb — is filled with other conservatives who fled California.

I mentioned the polls that suggest Harris is leading the traditionally conservative bloc of older voters, and asked Martin if he thought that was because seniors recall a time when a presidential candidate didn’t use profanity and insults.

Martin noted that polls, which he doesn’t trust, are inconclusive, and he said that while he still cringes at times when Trump speaks, “I don’t think any of his ramblings will cost him the election.”

What will win him the election, Martin predicted, is inflation, gas prices, energy costs, crime and immigration.

“When Trump came up with a statement that he wasn’t going to tax Social Security benefits, I think that was a big plus,” Martin said. (Economists argue that such a move would further stress the system.) Martin later texted me to add that a bank manager in Idaho told him that “seniors have come out of retirement because of the rising costs of food, fuel and services.”

In Rancho Palos Verdes, 82-year-old Norman Eagle thinks Trump’s antics can be appalling, and for a presidential candidate, “the name-calling is beyond anything that I’ve experienced in my lifetime.” Eagle added that as somewhat of a moderate who didn’t vote for Trump or Hillary Clinton in 2016 but went with Trump four years later, “I find his personal qualities to be obnoxious.”

But he’s voting for Trump anyway.

Why?

Because he thinks Trump will be better on the border and the economy, and because Trump has taken a wrecking ball to political correctness.

Eagle told me he had been a loyal Democrat as a young man but switched parties when he quit teaching to run his father’s corrugated box company, where he wrestled with labor issues and saw the world from a different vantage point. His transformation has cost him more than one friendship, he said, and he became estranged from a lifelong best friend he had gone to grade school with in Los Feliz.

I asked him to put me in touch with the friend.

“I don’t see how anybody with any kind of a moderate bent can be supportive of Donald Trump,” said Michael Bridge, 82, who lives in the San Fernando Valley and is back on speaking terms with Eagle.

A retired certified public accountant, Bridge fears that Trump is a threat to Social Security, Medicare and Obamacare. He thinks Trump has “greatly reduced the honor of being a politician.”

“My wife and I are depressed,” Bridge said, because a “dumbed-down” society is being misinformed by biased news sources, posing a threat to democracy, putting the U.S. in “a dangerous place” and setting a horrible example for the rest of the world.

Fortunately for Bridge, women might swing the election.

A September AARP poll found that women 50 and older favor Harris by 12 points, listing the top seven issues as the cost of living, immigration, threats to democracy, abortion and reproductive rights, Social Security and Medicare, jobs and unemployment, and the environment and climate change. And they make up 52% of the electorate, with similar edges in many of the critical swing states.

In July, I met two women who were taking a balance class at the Culver City Senior Center, and I checked back with them this week for their thoughts on how the 65-and-older vote will play out. Laura Clines, 71, and Carolynn Middleton, 74, are both voting for Harris.

Trump, said Clines, is “a big fat liar” who has “no integrity” and didn’t do a great job as president. “Look what he did at the border. He keeps blaming Harris, but he made a big mess, separating families and taking children away.”

Middleton is not at all surprised by the way Trump maligns Harris — who is Black, Asian and would be the first female president — calling her “slow” and “dumb as a rock” and accusing her of being “a shit vice president.”

“I’m surprised people are surprised,” Middleton said. “Does he cross the line? Yes, but that’s what he does.”

West Hollywood resident Bill Bekkala, 65, sent me a list of Trump outrages, hypocrisy, vulgarity, lies, insults and assorted travesties that’s longer than this column and is still a work in progress. (To name just a few: “seems strangely fixated on the late Arnold Palmer’s penis size,” “declared a female rival unelectable because of her face,” “sings the praises of corrupt and violent dictators,” “threatens to jail his enemies,” “represents the antithesis of everything Jesus stood for, yet claims to be a Christian.”)

“Trump is the nightmare from which we can never awaken,” Bekkala told me.

But we are not powerless.

We can vote.

steve.lopez@latimes.com