New Data Showing ‘Silver Surge’ of Senior Voters Raises Questions About Conventional Wisdom

Before the polls closed in Virginia on Election Day 2021, conventional wisdom was baked: Governor Youngkin bested Terry McAuliffe because of anger over school closures, mask mandates and supposed anger over ‘Critical Race Theory.’

NPR wrote that, “Democrats have to come up with a convincing way to answer the (often false) charges about how children are being taught about structural racism in schools.” MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace declared that, “Critical Race Theory, which isn’t real, turned the suburbs 15 points to the Trump insurrection endorsed Republican." Republican Senator Josh Hawley tweeted, that voters “don’t want parents persecuted, they don’t want critical race theory, they don’t want woke liberalism.” And so on.

The reality is much more complex. As is often the case, conventional wisdom is too often formed before all the facts are available.

There are two broad levels of analysis available to us: an assessment of the partisan swings at the county level between 2017 and 2021 in the context of school closures at the county level, and individual-level turnout data.

County Election and School Closure Data

The county level data shows no correlation between school closures and vote swings to Republicans. Of the top 10 counties in Virginia ranked by days with in-person education during the 2020-2021 school year, 6 of the 10 saw a larger swing towards Republicans than the state average swing of 5.3%, while the remaining 4 counties saw a slightly below average GOP swing. In fact, the biggest swings towards Republicans occurred in southwestern Virginia, where schools were open for in person instruction for most of the year.

Conversely, those counties that conducted virtual learning for most of the 2020-2021 school year saw a smaller shift towards Republicans than the state average - the top 10 counties for days spent in virtual learning in 2020-2021 saw a 3.8% average swing towards Republicans, well below the statewide average of 5.3%.

Individual Vote History Data

In recent weeks, Virginia has released records of who voted in the 2021 election. At TargetSmart, we are able to match that information up with each voters’ previous vote history, demographic information and other commercially available data to gain a better understanding of the electorate. While we never know who someone voted for, we know who voted.

Now that all the data is in, here’s what we know:

The senior vote surged. By a lot.

Turnout among voters age 75 or older increased by 59%, relative to 2017 while turnout among voters under age 30 only increased by just 18%. Notably, turnout of all other age groups combined (18-74), which would likely include parents of school-aged children, only increased by 9% compared to 2017.

These are massive changes in the electorate in an election that was far from a blowout: Youngkin won by just 2%.

  • Voters age 65 and older are an estimated 15.9% of Virginia’s population according to the census, yet accounted for 31.9% of all ballots cast in 2021.
  • 348,314 more seniors (ages 65+) voted in Virginia’s 2021 gubernatorial election than in the 2016 presidential election.
  • The Virginia market with the largest increase in senior vote share (ages 65+) from 2017 to was Charlottesville (67% increase), followed by the spill Raleigh-Durham market (48% increase).
  • Notably, turnout among voters of color also surged in 2021 compared to 2017: African-American turnout surged 13%, Hispanic turnout by 17.5% and Asian-American turnout by 37%. (An earlier version of this analysis compared final early vote data from 2017 to 2021. That error has been corrected.)

So what does this all mean? Did outraged parents swing the election? While it’s certainly possible that education motivated large swaths of the voter mobilization, there was not a surge in parent-age voters compared to seniors.

This “silver surge” is an untold story that fundamentally undermines the conventional wisdom that COVID-19 protocols in schools and fears about Critical Race Theory in curriculum determined the outcome of the election. Looking ahead to future elections, especially November’s midterms, this bloc of senior voters will likely continue to turn out and have a significant impact on the electorate as a whole.

In the coming weeks and months we’ll continue to share analysis and findings on the evolving electorate. Please email me at Tom@TargetSmart.com or Tweet me @TBonier to share your feedback, questions and observations. We look forward to continuing the conversation.