WASHINGTON, April 25 (UPI) -- Senior citizens have continued to be a big share of the vote in this year's U.S. presidential primaries in spite of the growing youth vote.
Exit polls show that about one-third of voters are 60 or older, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. In some states, including California, Massachusetts and Ohio, the percentage has been higher, about 40 percent.
While the percentage of those under 30 is up from 2004, it is still about half the senior vote.
"The new is always more interesting and the new story is about the increase of younger voters, which is very impressive. But any campaign that relies heavily on younger voters is running a risk," Lawrence Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics at the University of Minnesota, told the Chronicle. "Younger voters are a difficult lover to have. They're a voting bloc that can betray you and is often quite whimsical. The nastiness that occurs in a campaign is something that could turn young voters off."
