By Adam Pagnucco.
Age is a known predictor of turnout. In MoCo, Leisure World is famous for its high turnout and led the county’s local areas in the 2022 Democratic primary. Turnout rates by age are easy to measure directly in the voter file. We’re going to do it indirectly by using zip code median age from the Census Bureau’s 2017-21 American Community Survey.
First, there are differences in median age by geography. The chart below shows median age by county in CD6. The data for MoCo is specific to the part of the county inside the congressional district.
Garrett County is by far the oldest jurisdiction in the district. It also leads in turnout rate in both the Democratic and Republican primaries as shown in Part Three. This is not a coincidence.
The chart below shows median age for the largest towns in the district.
Clarksburg and Germantown are the two youngest large towns in the district and both lagged in turnout. Again, this is not a coincidence.
Now let’s look at precinct voting by median age of precinct zip codes. The chart below shows this for the 2022 Democratic primary.
The oldest precincts lead the youngest ones in turnout rate by 9 points. Any political science student would predict this.
The chart below shows the same information for the 2022 Republican primary.
The variation among Republicans is more modest, perhaps because the zip codes with lots of Republican primary voters tend to be older overall. The geographic differences in both parties will be much amplified by direct analysis of the voter file.
Like most elections, older voters will decide the identity of the party nominees in CD6. I expect all campaigns to target them with great vigor.
We will look at household income next.