No, Seniors Don't Prefer Romney on Medicare

Another interesting tidbit from the recent Washington Times poll. They asked whether people thought Romney and the Republicans or Obama and the Democrats were more likely to try to cut Medicare, and broke down the results by age. Overall, 46% said Romney was more likely, 27% said Obama, 19% said neither, and 8% were unsure. That's a +19 disadvantage for Romney here, since a higher number is presumptively worse. Among voters under 30, Romney's net disadvantage was +23%. Among voters aged 30 through 49, that figure was +22%. Among voters 50 to 64 years old, the gap shrunk to 15%. Among those 65 or older, the gap was 17%. So, okay, Romney does a little less badly among the elderly, but he's still losing the issue. A lot.

Here's one interesting thing of note, though: the percent saying "neither" is really strongly correlated with age. By age group, in ascending order, those figures were 21%, 25%, 16%, and 9%. If one lumps "unsure" in with "neither," which might or might not be valid, it's 33%, 30%, 25%, 17%. Seniors, in other words, are really scared everyone's trying to cut their Medicare.

But they're still more scared of Romney than of Obama.