Older women are key midterm voters, AARP poll finds

Older women will be key swing voters in the midterms according to a new poll from the AARP.

The national survey of battleground House districts found that all likely voters age 50 and older favored Republicans on the generic congressional ballot by nine percentage points. But women age 50 and older were evenly split over which party should control Congress, with 44% favoring Democrats, 44% favoring Republicans and 12% undecided.

"Women 50-plus are going to make a big difference in this race," GOP pollster Bob Ward told reporters during a Wednesday briefing. The GOP polling firm Fabrizio Ward, former President Donald Trump's pollster, conducted the survey with the Democratic firm Impact Research, President Joe Biden's campaign pollster.

Despite the even congressional ballot, older women had negative views of Biden, with just 40% approving his job as president. That was on par with Biden's overall approval rating of 37% from likely voters surveyed.

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And like other groups of voters, older women are prioritizing economic issues. Asked which issue was more important in deciding their vote for Congress, inflation and rising prices or the Supreme Court's decision overturning Roe v. Wade, 56 % of women age 50 and older said inflation, while 40% said the latter.

The poll surveyed voters across 56 House districts the Cook Political Report rates as competitive. Biden won these districts by an average of 6 percentage points in 2020. The poll surveyed 2,352 likely voters from July 5-12 in a mix of landline, cell phone and text-to-web interviews. The margin of error was plus or minus 2.8 percentage points.