To win over seniors, Harris should highlight her support for Social Security 

Vice President Kamala Harris has run a nearly perfect campaign since her meteoric, history-making rise to the top of the Democratic ticket. But she can and must do a better job convincing seniors to vote for her. 

A formerly reliable segment of the Democratic Party’s electoral coalition, voters aged 65 and older have leaned Republican since 2000. The Harris-Walz ticket has an excellent opportunity to bring these voters back. Even if the Democratic presidential ticket does not carry older voters, just reducing the margin of loss might well decide the election. 

We call older voters “always-voters,” because it is only a small exaggeration to say that they always vote. They have disproportionately high turnout rates, including in the seven battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. 

In 2020, older voters had a turnout rate of 71.9 percent, compared to an overall turnout rate of 67 percent. In Arizona and Georgia, older voter rates were 20- and 17-percentage points higher, respectively.

In 2020, voters aged 65 and older were 22 percent of the total electorate. Voters age 50 and older comprised over half of all voters.

Older voters will continue to constitute a disproportionate share of the 2024 electorate; even minor shifts in their voting behavior is likely to have significant impacts in key states.

Democrats should win this age group. As the creators and protectors of Social Security and Medicare – vital bread-and-butter issues for seniors – they are aligned with the overwhelming majority of older voters.

Despite that, the Harris-Walz ticket is underperforming with older voters. The most recent polling indicates that the ticket is losing voters 65 and over by seven percentage points. Before withdrawing from the race, President Biden was winning this segment by three percentage points.  

The Democrats are doing an excellent job of letting voters know that the Biden-Harris administration is lowering drug prices, including giving Medicare the right to negotiate prescription drug prices. Social Security, though, is another story. 

Like Medicare, the Democrats align with the American people on the issue. Poll after poll shows that overwhelming majorities of Americans do not want to see their earned benefits cut. They overwhelmingly support the Harris-Walz plan to require those with incomes of over $400,000 to pay their fair share. 

The problem is that recent polling shows that the American people do not know where the parties stand. And the Harris-Walz campaign has yet to run ads making the contrast clear. 

Trump is cleverly trying to fill the vacuum. His campaign is mailing flyers into homes in the swing states and flooding the airwaves with television and radio ads saying that undocumented immigrants are stealing from Social Security, but that he will protect it.

The claim is a lie which is easily answered. By law, undocumented workers are prohibited from receiving any Social Security, even if they become documented and prove that they made contributions. And, like all workers, documented immigrants must work and contribute for years to receive even a penny of Social Security (at least forty quarters, or ten years, to receive even a small amount of retirement benefits). 

Moreover, Trump’s record shows he is no protector of Social Security. As president, he proposed Social Security cuts in every single one of his budgets. Before running for president, he advocated privatizing Social Security — which he slandered as a “Ponzi scheme” — and favored raising the retirement age. And the architects of Project 2025 have been gunning for Social Security for decades.

Given how much money the Harris-Walz team is raising and how key this voting bloc is, the campaign has the resources to run multiple ads on Social Security. Some may think that you cannot court both the young and the old, but this is incorrect. Despite efforts by Republicans to convince elites that the younger generation resents the benefits older people receive, this is Washington-speak at its worst.

Americans are part of intergenerational families. Grandparents are not better off if their grandchildren are economically insecure. And grandchildren are not better off if their grandparents are living in poverty. Everyone should be able to count on their earned benefits now and in the future.

And one always voter switching from Trump to Harris has the impact of two new voters. The campaign should be recruiting new voters. But it should work just as hard, if not harder, to convince always-voters to vote Democratic.

Harris and Walz are inspiring all of us by reminding us that we have more in common than what divides us. One manifestation of our joint interests is our Social Security system in which we all pool our risks and we all benefit.

The Harris-Walz campaign needs to let voters know through ads and mailings that Democrats are the ones who will protect, strengthen and expand our extremely popular and successful Social Security system.

Nancy J. Altman is president of Social Security Works and William J. Arnone is chief executive officer – emeritus at the National Academy of Social Insurance.