So now Democrats like older candidates. Go figure.
How Old Is Too Old for President? Depends Who’s RunningMAY 30, 2014
Brendan Nyhan
Does a candidate’s age matter in presidential elections? It’s less relevant than you might think.
A Pew poll released last week asked voters how likely they would be to support a presidential candidate with various traits or experiences, like being a governor, a Catholic or a woman. Although these might seem like important factors in how people make up their minds, voters often seem to work backward, rationalizing their views of the likely contenders rather than expressing a strong preference for a particular type of candidate.
Before the 2008 presidential campaign, for example, Democrats were much more likely to raise concerns about electing an older presidential candidate. A February 2007 Pew poll showed, for instance, that 60 percent of Democrats said they would be less likely to support presidential candidates in their 70s — far more than Republicans (42 percent) and independents (43 percent).
These differences were presumably related to the prospects of John McCain, a top Republican presidential contender who would have been 72 when he took office. It’s not surprising, then, that 36 percent of Democrats said Mr. McCain was too old to be president in a September 2008 Pew poll compared with 21 percent of independents and 11 percent of Republicans.
Photo
Clockwise from top left, John McCain, Hillary Clinton, Bob Dole and Ronald Reagan. Had they become president, Mr. McCain would have been 72 and Mr. Dole 73 when they took office. President Reagan was 69 at his first inauguration. Ms. Clinton would be 69 if she became president in 2016. Credit Michael Appleton for The New York Times, Mandel Ngan/Agence France-Presse -- Getty Images, Wally McNamee/Corbis, Roberto Borea/Associated Press
The same pattern of partisan differences over the importance of candidate age occurred in 1996 when Bob Dole was the Republican presidential nominee. A July 1996 CBS/New York Times poll found that 48 percent of Democrats thought Mr. Dole’s age (he would have been 73 upon taking office) was an obstacle to him being an effective president compared with 37 percent of independents and 17 percent of Republicans. And before Mr. Dole, it was Ronald Reagan (age 69 at his first inauguration) who Democrats suggested might be too old to be president.
With the 2016 presidential election looming, however, it is Democrats who appear likely to be supporting an older presidential candidate. Hillary Clinton would be 69 years old if she took office and would presumably face a younger Republican candidate if she won the Democratic nomination.
As expected, Democrats are now starting to feel more positively toward older candidates: The new Pew poll found that only 44 percent said they would be less likely to support a presidential candidate who is 70 or above, a decrease of 16 percentage points from the 2007 poll — a drop that Pew called “particularly notable” relative to the smaller decreases observed among Republicans (from 42 percent to 32 percent) and independents (from 43 percent to 34 percent).
Candidate traits can matter on the margin, of course — especially in primary campaigns. For instance, strong support among African-American voters was a key factor in President Obama’s defeat of Ms. Clinton in the 2008 Democratic primaries. But in general elections, party matters more. Just as many Republican voters overcame their discomfort with Mitt Romney’s Mormonism to vote overwhelmingly for him, so too will Democrats quickly make peace with the idea of electing a 69-year-old to be president.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/31/upshot/how-old-is-too-old-for-president-depends-whos-running.html?_r=0
