The Real Reason Trump Got Elected: Senior Citizens

The real difference between liberals and conservatives is liberals are their most liberal when they’re young, peaking in college, then they get progressively more moderate as they grow older, while conservatives are their most moderate when they're young, peaking in college, then they get progressively more conservative as they grow older.

If people died in their 40s, this wouldn’t be a problem. Conservatives would die at an age when they reached the equivalent extreme of most liberals. But people are living to their 80s and 90s now. Liberals are extremely liberal for about ten years while conservatives are extremely conservative for about fifty years. This creates a much higher number of extremists on the conservative side as opposed to the liberal side. The Republican party is getting more and more extreme because conservatives are living longer and longer—and they are all voting.

The country is essentially being ruled by the votes of the extremely conservative elderly. Which is a problem because they are so easily persuaded by fake news on Facebook, propaganda-fueled chain emails, and they will believe anything FOX News says. As a result, Republican politicians are becoming more extreme in their conservatism to please their base, most of whom are senior citizens.

The alt-right and neo-Nazis are not the real threat to America. Their numbers are so low comparatively. Social media bubbles just make it seem like their numbers are bigger. There's no real rise of white supremacy. There are some for sure, but they're not who got Trump elected. It was the conservative elderly. They’re not alt-right Nazis, just slightly racist grandmas and grandpas in their 70s and 80s (the same age as Trump by the way). These elderly people are not especially racist or bigoted; they are just scared by how much the world is changing and want it to go back to the way it was before (“Make America Great Again").

People becoming more conservative as they age is completely normal. It's always happened throughout human history. The problem is people are living so much longer that there are more numbers of these conservative voters, and they only grow more conservative the longer they live. I don’t know what the solution is, but reaching out to the elderly and at least hearing their concerns could be a start.