As shellackings go, the 2010 election was as comprehensive as it gets. Democrats lost among women, men, high-school graduates, college graduates, Catholics, Protestants, and so on. But there was one demographic group whose repudiation was especially influential: senior citizens. In the 2006 midterm election, seniors split their vote evenly between House Democrats and Republicans. This time, they went for Republicans by a twenty-one-point margin. The impact of that swing was magnified by the fact that seniors, always pretty reliable midterm voters, were particularly fired up: nearly a quarter of the votes cast were from people over sixty-five. The election has been termed the “revolt of the middle class.” But it might more accurately be called the revolt of the retired
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financial/2010/11/22/101122ta_talk_surowiecki
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