How many Nixon-Nixon-Nixon-Trump-Trump-Trump voters will there be?

[TransfemmeGoreVidal]

?

[Sir Mohamed]

Most lifelong octogenarian GOPers

[Stranger in a strange land]

The youngest someone eligible to vote in the 1960 election could be is 85, but among people that age and older this probably isn't that unusual. Per recent data that I was able to pull, there are about 6.9 million people in this age group (85+) still alive in the US.


Turnout of the Voting Age Population was 62.8%, so if we multiply:
6,946,402*.628 = 4,306,769

Currently living 1960 voters would have been relatively younger during that election, and as we all know younger people tend to have lower turnout, HOWEVER it stands to reason that voters would live longer than non-voters, so to make the math easy, I'll assume it's a wash

about 10% of the US population is foreign-born and I have no idea how many would have moved to the US after turned 21, but to make the math easy, I'll just revise the above figure down by 5%:

4,306,769*.95 = 4,091,431

Nixon got 49.55% in 1960. Kennedy did better with younger voters, BUT Republican voters tended to outlive Democratic voters in those days, since voting Democratic was still correlated with lower SES and therefore lower lifespan, so I'll again handwave the figures and use Nixon's vote percentage for his 1960 vote among 85+ people still alive:

 4,091,431*.4955 = 2,027,305

Now we come to the 1968 election, where Nixon's vote total DROPPED to 43.4% but he still won: it's possible Nixon didn't gain ANY new voters among people who had voted in 1960, but he likely gained at least a few (though probably not more than 1-2% of the electorate). So I'll assume that of the 43.4% Nixon got in 1960. 43% were his 1960 voters:

2,027,305*(43/49.55) = 1,759,315

Almost all of Nixon's 1968 voters voted for him in 1972, aside from a possible turnout dropoff among people who didn't vote because the election was less competitive:

1,759,315*.95 = 1,671,349

It's very hard to say how many of these people ended up voting for Trump in 2016 and 2020, though I think it stands to reason that the vast majority did, especially since their views would have been formed by that point, but let's just ballpark it at 75% still being Republicans and Trump supporters in 2016, 2020, and 2024:

1,671,349*.75 = 1,253,512

There are a lot of assumptions here and a lot of very wide uncertainty, but I think we can reasonably conclude that there will be at least 1 million such voters.

[wnwnwn]

Very old nebraskan?

[TransfemmeGoreVidal]

Just imagine being this consistently and devastatingly wrong lol

[GeorgiaModerate]

Most lifelong octogenarian GOPers

Not necessarily.  My late mother was a lifelong Republican.  She was a huge fan of Nixon, and would have happily voted for him again if he had been eligible and ran again.  But she hated Donald Trump with a passion.  She voted for Gary Johnson in 2016 and for Biden in 2020 -- the only time she ever voted for a Democrat for President.  She genuinely liked Biden (and Jill Biden), and so did many of her peers at the assisted living home.

[Mr. Smith]

My grandma for one.

[AltWorlder]

Someone living in the world of Watchmen.

[Skill and Chance]

Most lifelong octogenarian GOPers

It's more complicated than that because Trump's base skews very Catholic/ex-Catholic secular compared to generic R and Catholics in 1960 voted for Kennedy by nearly the margin black people in 2008/12 voted for Obama.  Therefore this particular configuration should be rarer than baseline partisan and life expectancy numbers would suggest.

[AlterEgo]

HOWEVER it stands to reason that voters would live longer than non-voters,

Here's a correlation I'd need an explanation on.

[Stranger in a strange land]

HOWEVER it stands to reason that voters would live longer than non-voters,

Here's a correlation I'd need an explanation on.

Generally speaking, voters tend to be better-educated, higher income, and higher SES than non-voters (and as far as I'm aware, this has always been the case), meaning that they tend to have a longer life expectancy.

[SWE]

The youngest someone eligible to vote in the 1960 election could be is 85,

Technically wrong - Georgia allowed 18 year olds to vote by then, so an 82 year old Georgian hypothetically could qualify, although such a person would be very rare

[wnwnwn]

Most lifelong octogenarian GOPers

It's more complicated than that because Trump's base skews very Catholic/ex-Catholic secular compared to generic R and Catholics in 1960 voted for Kennedy by nearly the margin black people in 2008/12 voted for Obama.  Therefore this particular configuration should be rarer than baseline partisan and life expectancy numbers would suggest.

No, they didn't.