Senior Voters Are Turning Out In Force To Protest Trump—And Could Be Democrats' Secret Weapon

Think voters get more conservative with age? Think again.

Left Image Credit: Third Act Maine. Right Image Credit: Todd Beeton.

On Saturday, millions of Americans turned out to protests large and small, in red areas and blue, to tell Donald Trump, there are “No Kings in America!” In New York alone, there were more than ninety No Kings protests stretching from Long Island all the way to The Finger Lakes region of the state where I live (just southeast of Rochester) and beyond.

I opted to attend a protest in Canandaigua, a lakeside city of fewer than 11,000 residents, one of just two small Democratic bastions in Rep. Claudia Tenney’s 24th Congressional district, which has the dubious distinction of being the reddest district in the state.

But you wouldn’t have known it on Saturday.

At the corner of two main thoroughfares, an estimated 2,000 people gathered, lining the streets, waving homemade signs and chanting “Hey hey, ho ho, Donald Trump has got to go.” And the dominant cohort among them, as has consistently been the case for all major actions I’ve attended in the area since Trump took back power, have been our senior citizens.

You can see for yourself here:

From my 81-year-old mother—a former Republican whose contempt for Trump grows each day, to a U.S. Vietnam veteran manning the bullhorn, to my former city councilor in his mid-70s who was determined to attend despite recovering from recent major surgery, the seniors were out in force on Saturday. And not just up by me. My Mom’s phone blew up with excited texts from her friends, sending signs and memes they saw at Connecticut protests and celebrating all the “silver heads” they saw there. I found it particularly striking since it goes against the conventional wisdom that people become more conservative as they age. Not so in the age of Trump, it would appear.

And it turned out, others were moved by the phenomenon of seniors in action as well. After I posted a photo of a woman at the Canandaigua protest with an epic “Grantifa: Grandmas Against Fascism” sign, it went viral on Substack Notes, earning 7,400 likes and almost 800 reposts (which is a lot for me!).

But this mobilization of seniors that I witnessed was hardly an isolated case; it’s a full-fledged phenomenon, as Akaya Windwood and Bill McKibben, leaders of Third Act, which seeks to organize older Americans, observed in their L.A. Times piece last month titled “Why older Americans are Trump’s biggest nightmare.”

So, what’s behind the passion our oldest Americans have against our 79-year-old president? And can this cohort, who are traditionally the most reliable voters, help fuel a blue wave in 2026 and beyond?

OK, Boomers!

It wasn’t so long ago that Donald Trump won the support of our oldest Americans—identified as ages 65 and older in most polls and election analyses—quite handily.

In 2016, Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton among this demographic by 7 points. And in 2020, even as Joe Biden won the nationwide vote by 4.5%, he lost seniors to Trump by 5%. But then in 2024, something shifted.

As CNN reported last June:

National and swing-state polls have shown Biden facing steep challenges winning over younger and non-White voters — constituencies that make up a key part of the Democratic coalition. But he’s made gains among older voters, a group typically won handily by Republicans. It’s a prized slice of the electorate, with high turnout rates and outsized sway in several key battleground states…

In 2024, baby boomers now make up a wide majority of the senior vote for the first time — an enticing demographic shift the Biden campaign is seizing upon in Michigan and across the country.

Joe Biden—and then Kamala Harris—worked hard to become the first Democratic presidential candidate since Al Gore to win the 65 and over vote. But in the end, according to 2024 exit polls, Trump eked out a bare victory over Harris by just 1% with these voters, 50%-49%. And while Harris may not have won that battle, the shift was a sign of things to come in the longer war.

From the start of Trump’s term in January, it was the oldest Americans who registered the strongest disapproval of Trump.

That trend has only continued…and strengthened…over the past several months.

From Windwood and McKibben in May:

If you look at the internals of, say, the most recent Marist poll, [Trump] does worst among members of the oldest age cohort: Only 37% of the greatest/silent generation — people in their 80s and 90s — approve of the president’s performance. Baby boomers — those, like us, in our 60s and 70s — aren’t far behind, with only 41% giving him the nod.

And as for the disproportionate representation among the oldest Americans at the anti-Trump protests this year, I’m not the only one noticing the trend.

As Windwood and McKibben observed:

Meanwhile, anyone who’s taken part in protests against the administration around the nation can testify to the amount of gray hair in the crowd. We’ve marched in New York, New England and California in recent weeks, and large swaths of the crowd definitely qualify for senior discounts at the movies.

And sure enough, the evidence was all over social media.

Despite the stereotype many hold that older voters tend to be more conservative, this current batch of seniors seems determined to buck that trend.

As Republican pollster Bob Ward told AARP Magazine:

People 65 and older are closer to the Woodstock generation, which came of age fighting for civil rights, women’s rights, and against the Vietnam War. Those values still shape their political views, he says.

And for several reasons, Donald Trump has set up a perfect storm to activate these voters.

Take Trump’s empowering of Elon Musk and DOGE to take a wrecking ball to the federal government.

Write Windwood and McKibbon,

As Elon Musk and his minions mess with the Social Security Administration and the White House plans big Medicaid cuts, people of a certain age feel a rare combination of fear and anger. Two-thirds of older Americans rely on Social Security for more than half their income — we spent our entire working lives paying in, on the explicit promise that it would be there for us when we retire.

Not to mention their aversion to volatility in the markets thanks to Trump’s self-inflicted trade war:

Even those who have savings and investments are watching them tank amid Trump’s tariff chaos: If your 401k drops 10% when you’re 30, you may have a chance to make it back. But if you’re 75?

But it’s also about the wisdom that comes from all that these voters have seen in their lives, and the unique perspective it gives them to see precisely the level of devastation Trump has sought to wreak.

From the dismantling the administrative state…

Older voters watching Musk and Trump’s Cabinet dismantle the federal government understand why those agencies were built in the first place. If you’re 40, the Clean Air Act may seem a little abstract, but that’s because it’s worked so well. If you’re 70 or 80 you remember smog-choked cities and rivers that caught fire, and you have no idea why anyone would want them back.

To RFK Jr’s decimation of vaccine protocols…

Lani Ritter-Hall, a board member of our organization, wrote recently of her memories of being a “Polio pioneer” in 1954, lining up for the shots that changed childhood for the better. “I have that special memory of participating in a grand scientific experiment to benefit humanity.” How do you think she feels watching RFK Jr. blather on about vaccines? (We’re old enough to remember Kennedy’s father, by the way, and to mourn how far the apple fell from the tree).

And Trump’s attempts to roll back initiatives that promote diversity, equity, and inclusion.

We know from experience why the country had DEI programs, because we remember Jim Crow and its vestiges in segregated schools and neighborhoods. When the government removes lessons about the Tuskegee Airmen from air force training, or purges Jackie Robinson from a Department of Defense website, these are not figures of the impossibly distant past to us; the visceral anger of those whose lives paralleled these people are why the government had to backtrack.

Careful What You Wish For, MAGA

MAGA, for its part, sees old folks marching against Trump and smells blood in the water, as if counting the days until Trump’s most fierce opponents die off. Indeed, there’s been a perverse pleasure among the right that so many of those mobilizing against Trump have been older. They think somehow that the MAGA movement is on the upswing with diverse young voters while the left’s old white folks are dying out.

But are they though? To the contrary, senior voters are only growing in power.

In 2016, voters 65 and older made up just 16% of the electorate. In 2020, that rose to 22%.

And in 2024, they made up 28% of the electorate.

They are also being targeted and organized like never before, through organizations such as Third Act, which put their mission this way:

We’re used to thinking that humans grow more conservative as they age, perhaps because we have more to protect, or simply because we’re used to things the way they are. But our generations saw enormous positive change early in our lives—the civil rights movement, for instance, or the fight to end massive wars or guarantee the rights of women. And now we fear that the promise of those changes may be dying, as the planet heats and inequality grows.

As Science Friday put it:

If you’re a baby boomer, you may remember the first Earth Day, the Civil Rights Movement, anti-war protests, and the first Pride parade. The list goes on, because the 1960s and 70s were packed with social revolutions. But the organization Third Act has a message for boomers: Your work isn’t done yet.

Coming For Their Medical Care

Republicans in Congress are doing themselves no favors by giving seniors even more reasons to get to work.

In addition to the well-publicized Medicaid cuts Republicans have passed in their reconciliation budget bill, just look what else is hiding in Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” as it makes its way through Senate negotiations: a hit to millions of Medicare beneficiaries.

Per The Bulwark:

Like so many other provisions in the GOP legislation, it’s not a straight-up reduction in benefits or restriction in eligibility. Rather, it’s a change in the enrollment process for a particular program within Medicaid called the “Medicare Savings Program.”

Yes, you read that right: It’s a program within Medicaid with the word “Medicare” in its title. That’s one of the things that makes it so confusing!

But the short of it is that the program (along with a related initiative) plays a critical role in helping vulnerable Medicare beneficiaries cover their medical costs. And thanks to the Republican bill, roughly 1.3 million people who qualify for the assistance wouldn’t get the benefits, according to official estimates.

So, sure, GOP. Rile up this sleeping giant. Because if past is prologue, senior voters just may help drive them right out of power in Washington.

In 2016, seniors made up just 16% of the electorate and went for Trump by 7%. Two years later, they were 26% of the electorate, voting for Republicans by just 2 points, which led Democrats to win 40 seats with a 7% blue wave victory over Republicans.

Imagine a similar surge in 2026, just two years after seniors made up 28% of the electorate and went for Trump by just 1%, with that needle moving bluer each year.

Silver Wave 2026, anyone?