Zack Stanton is digital editor of Politico Magazine. Steven Shepard is editor for the Politico Caucus and chief polling analyst for Politico. Ruairí Arrieta-Kenna is a news assistant at Politico Magazine. You can follow him on Twitter @ruairiak.

WIND LAKE, Wis. — In this unincorporated town on the other side of the border from the famed political bellwether of Waukesha County, Gary Bebler could sense that something was going to be different about the 2018 midterm elections.

Bebler, the 62-year-old owner of Gary’s Wind Lake Boathouse, a rustic restaurant and bar in a sparsely populated area where everyone seems to know everyone else, tries to stay apolitical. “Being a bar owner, you’ve got to listen to both sides,” he told POLITICO Magazine in early November while sitting at a table in his establishment. And lately, he’s been listening to customers spout off about politics a lot more than usual. “In the past, I never heard that much,” Bebler said. “But this year, it’s common. Every night, somebody’s going to go off.”


His clientele is mostly people over age 50, overwhelmingly white, and heavily Republican. In 2016, Donald Trump won Wind Lake’s surrounding community by a 3-to-1 margin. Even so, said Bebler, “I have a feeling there’s more sleeper Democrats out there. But in this environment, they’re not going to say it.”

This year, “from what I’ve heard people saying, they think it’s really important to get out and vote,” Bebler said. He demurs when asked about his own politics. “But I can tell you what people say.”

One of Gary’s regulars is Willy Ellertson, a 55-year-old cardiac lab technician who volunteers on weekends as an emergency responder for the Wind Lake Fire Department. A Republican, he’s glad that Trump is in the White House, and says that people in these parts are happy “because of promises that he made that they are hoping change things.” Ellertson wants Obamacare repealed and replaced. Yet he’s troubled by aspects of the alternative offered by congressional Republicans. “I’m on the same page as everybody else in thinking that pre-existing conditions need to be covered,” he said. “And I do think it could affect how people vote for Congress.”

Gary Bebler, owner of Gary's Wind Lake Boathouse, a small but popular restaurant and bar, handles most of the kitchen and floor duties on Monday nights, his chef's night off. | Patrick Cavan Brown for Politico Magazine

The top concern for other regulars is what they see as the changing identity of America. At the bar, Tony Fischer, a 71-year-old veteran and retiree, sips from a bottle of beer. “Our country needs to be saved from itself,” he said when asked about his beliefs. “We should be one people, of one faith, of one country.”

It’s a refrain Bebler hears constantly: America doesn’t look like it used to. My health care is too expensive and doesn’t cover my needs.


Sometimes, the two gripes are married. Bebler said the main story he hears from patrons, over and over, is about people who don’t have insurance but who receive free care at the emergency room. Bebler, who doesn’t have health insurance, bristles at the thought. “I’d never do it in a million years,” he said. It’s a matter of pride and dignity.

It’s a sentiment shared by his clientele, according to Bebler, and something many of them see as distinguishing themselves from immigrants and people of color. While “people who don’t have any money and really need government help” don’t accept handouts, Bebler said, channeling his customers, “too many minorities take advantage of stuff that they shouldn’t be able to take advantage of. That’s what I hear.”

Top: While most political yard signs are created by campaigns or PACs for specific candidates, this one in Manitowoc County was homemade. Bottom: Protesters defiantly mock the president outside a Trump rally in Mosinee, Wisconsin, this October. | Patrick Cavan Brown for Politico Magazine

The back-and-forth at the Boathouse is a crystallized version of the competing narratives of the 2018 election and the two parties’ approaches to trying to win over older voters: Democrats’ messages about health care and protecting people with pre-existing conditions versus a Republican message that swapped talk about the booming economy for a more Trump-fueled culture-war approach that put immigration front and center.

Set aside the blue- and red-wave rhetoric of 2018 and take a broader view of elections over the past 25 years, and a different kind of wave comes into view. It’s not a political wave that ebbs and flows every few years, but a demographic wave that, for the past quarter-century, has gained strength. It’s not red or blue, but a gray wave.

In 1994, exit polls by Edison Research show that voters over age 45 made up just 55 percent of the electorate in House races. But in each of the three most recent midterm cycles—2010, 2014 and 2018—Americans in that same age bracket have made up roughly two-thirds of the national electorate. Sixty-five percent of voters in 2018 House races were over 45, according to the national exit poll; 56 percent were over 50, compared with 46 percent in 2016.

Democrats’ resounding victories in House races from coast to coast—nationwide, the party won the popular vote for the House by a 6.7 percent margin, as of late Monday—were driven by a marked improvement among all segments of the electorate. But because older voters made up a larger share of the electorate in this year’s midterms, Democrats’ stronger performance with this cohort was critical to their success.

New Window Wisconsin's Deciders In Their Own Words: We asked seniors in Milwaukee—one of the most racially segregated and politically polarized cities in the nation—what they want the next Congress to do. Here’s what they told us. (CLICK TO OPEN) | Patrick Cavan Brown for Politico Magazine

Exit polls from 2016 suggest that in the 2016 House vote, Republicans defeated Democrats 54 percent to 44 percent among voters age 50–64, and by 53 percent to 45 percent among voters 65 and older. But this year, older voters were split almost evenly between the parties. Republicans carried voters in the 50–64 bracket by just 1 point, 50 percent to 49 percent—well within the margin of error for the exit poll, which was conducted for the National Election Pool by Edison Research. The results for voters 65 and older was nearly identical: 50 percent for Republicans and 48 percent for Democrats.

Nationally, Democrats won in 2018 because when it came to “the deciders”—those Americans age 50 and up—they fought Republicans to a draw.

And how they did that is the story of this election.



***

The main reason for Democrats’ electoral success this year with older Americans is that in 2018, Democratic candidates stopped seeing health care as a liability and began seeing it as a political weapon.

An analysis of House and Senate campaign ads by the Wesleyan Media Project found that from Sept. 18 to Oct. 15, 2018, a full 54.5 percent of all ads for Democratic House and Senate candidates discussed health care, while only 31.5 percent of pro-Republican ads did the same. It’s a striking reversal from the four election cycles since the 2010 passage of the Affordable Care Act—four elections in which no more than 10 percent of Democratic ads mentioned health care and during which Republicans were several times more likely to discuss the issue.

Health care was the single-most-discussed issue in political ads in 2018. Of the more than 3 million election ads that ran on TV this cycle, at least 1.2 million mentioned health care, according to an analysis by Bloomberg News based on data from Kantar Media/CMAG. Nearly three-fourths of those ads were paid for by Democrats and Democratic-aligned groups. And many of those were aimed squarely at voters over 50—and weren’t particularly subtle about that fact.

In western Houston, Democratic challenger Lizzie Fletcher hit Republican incumbent John Culberson for voting to repeal the ACA, President Barack Obama’s signature health care law, which has boomed in popularity since its passage in 2010. “The health care system is broken,” Fletcher said in a TV ad while walking in a large cement lot. “Congress could help fix it, but John Culberson is taking a wrecking ball to it,” she says as a large wrecking ball smashes through a cinderblock wall painted with the words “people 50 and over.” Fletcher won her race, flipping a House seat.

Top: At the polling place in a fire station in Burlington, Wisconsin, these red, white and blue cloth-curtained voting booths have been in service for more than 40 years. Bottom: One of the polling places in Cudahy, Wisconsin, is the gym of General Mitchell Elementary School. Cudahy, which is just south of Milwaukee, is a mostly white, working-class neighborhood with a high poverty rate. | Patrick Cavan Brown for Politico Magazine

It was one of the most reliable arrows in the Democratic quiver this year, a reference to a provision of House Republicans’ health care legislation that would’ve allowed insurers to charge Americans over age 50 up to five times more for health insurance than younger people. In races from upstate New York to the Arizona-Mexico border to Cedar Rapids, Iowa to the suburbs of Richmond, Va., Democratic challengers flipped GOP-held House seats while running ads accusing Republicans of supporting this so-called Age Tax, using a term popularized by the political arm of the AARP. (AARP underwrites POLITICO Magazine’s reported series, “The Deciders.”)

With health care front and center in the election, Republicans scrambled to respond, before deciding to return fire on the issue in ads that were aimed at seniors and alleged that Democrats plan to “end Medicare as we know it” by supporting the “Medicare-for-all” proposal backed by liberal stalwarts including Senator Bernie Sanders.

In an onslaught of TV spots paid for by the Congressional Leadership Fund, a Republican super PAC closely aligned with House Speaker Paul Ryan, Democratic challengers throughout the nation were accused of supporting a “radical” “single-payer socialist plan” that would “end Medicare as we know it,” “kick you off your health care plan, causing doctor shortages,” and “nearly double the debt.”

Nationally, Republicans’ attempts to parry the health care attacks failed to close the gap between the two parties on the issue. In a postelection POLITICO/Morning Consult survey, significantly more voters said they trusted Democrats in Congress more on health care, 48 percent, than they trusted Republicans, 35 percent.

Effectively tying Republicans among older voters allowed Democrats to exploit their long-held advantages with younger voters—leads that were larger than in recent elections, too. Democrats carried voters age 18 to 29 by 35 percentage points, voters in their 30s by 22 points and voters in their 40s by 6 points.

But where the senior vote was lopsided, not even overwhelming support from younger voters was enough to save Democratic candidates. The marquee pickups by Republicans last week—including the three Republicans who toppled Democratic incumbents in Senate races—were all instances in which Democrats were unable to match the GOP among older voters.

Top: A Friday night fish fry at a local supper club brings an early crowd. Supper clubs, which are fairly unique to Wisconsin, rose to prominence during the 1930s and ‘40s as prohibition roadhouses and have found new popularity in recent years. Bottom, left: The Mitchell Park Horticultural Conservatory, better known as The Domes, in Milwaukee is home to a desert oasis, a tropical jungle and floral gardens. Bottom, right: A couple of residents of Manitowoc, Wisconsin, walk their Rottweiler along the shore of Lake Michigan. | Patrick Cavan Brown for Politico Magazine

In North Dakota, Republican Rep. Kevin Cramer knocked off Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp in large part because of a 22-point lead among voters age 50 to 64. The two candidates actually split voters 65 and older—perhaps a vestige of the state’s long history of electing Democratic senators, like Quentin Burdick, Kent Conrad and Byron Dorgan before Heitkamp.

It was the same in Indiana, where Republican Mike Braun, a former state representative, won 56 percent of voters 50 and older—crucial to his resounding victory over Democratic Sen. Joe Donnelly, in which Braun received 52 percent of the overall vote.

In Missouri, Republican state Attorney General Josh Hawley won voters age 50–64 by 13 points, and voters 65 and older by 9 points, en route to an overall 6-point victory against Claire McCaskill, the Democratic incumbent.

For a few Republican candidates, winning older voters was not enough to secure a victory. Nevada’s Dean Heller, the one incumbent Republican senator running for reelection in a state Hillary Clinton carried in 2016, won voters 50 and older by a roughly 15-point margin. But Nevada’s broader electorate was skewed young: Half of all voters were younger than 50—about 5 points higher than the nation overall, and higher still than the states where Republicans wrested away Senate seats from Democrats.

Top, left: Milwaukee, a city whose baseball team is called the Brewers, is known for its beer brewing. In addition to being the home of beers like Miller and Pabst, Milwaukee also has a number of local craft breweries, like Good City Brewing. Top, right: Dairy farmers in Wisconsin have been struggling in part due to the tariffs of the Trump administration. Bottom, left: Darrell Javorek and his truck driver Ed Meis take measurements of a truckload of freshly cut logs used for firewood. Ed has worked for the Javoreks, who in addition to being dairy farmers have also been in the logging business for many years, since the late 1980s. Bottom, right: Willy Ellertson, a 55-year-old Republican in Wind Lake, Wisconsin, works at a local hospital during the week and volunteers as an EMT on weekends. | Patrick Cavan Brown for Politico Magazine

There were Senate races in all four states featured over the past several months in POLITICO Magazine’s “The Deciders”: In Florida, the race is very close, and ballots are still being tabulated. If Gov. Rick Scott does unseat Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson, it will be largely on the back of older voters, who made up two-thirds of the electorate in Florida and went for Scott by roughly 10 points. In Arizona, Democratic Rep. Kyrsten Sinema edged Republican Congresswoman Martha McSally and flipped a Senate seat by fighting to a statistical 50-50 tie among voters 65 and older, while running up a 19-point majority among voters ages 18–44, according to exit polls.

Meanwhile, Republicans mounted only token challenges to Democratic incumbents in Ohio and Pennsylvania—running against poorly funded, lackluster GOP nominees— despite Trump’s victory in both states during the 2016 presidential election. Sens. Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Bob Casey of Pennsylvania both carried voters 50 and older in their races; Brown by talking about pocketbook issues like pensions that were important to union voters, and Casey by pledging his willingness to work across the aisle while slowly piling up legislative achievements ranging from ensuring the U.S. military uses American steel for armor plates to providing support for families hit hard by opioid addiction.

In polls conducted earlier this year for “The Deciders” series, voters 50 and older in each of the four states chose health care, Medicare and Social Security as their top issues—and the salience of these issues was confirmed by last week’s exit polls. In the Edison Research exit poll, 41 percent of voters cited health care as the most important issue facing the country. In second place was immigration, the top concern for 23 percent of voters. And the partisan breakdown on those issues was a mirror image: Among “health care” voters, 75 percent voted Democratic and 23 percent went Republican; for “immigration” voters, 75 percent voted Republican and 23 percent went Democratic.

Last Tuesday, outside polling places throughout Wisconsin—another key battleground state with high-profile statewide races—voters reflected that partisan breakdown.

Top: An attendee of Scott Walker’s Election Night campaign party shows off his Trump-supporting t-shirt. Hours later, the upbeat mood at the event would dissipate as Walker lost his re-election bid, the state’s Democratic senator kept her seat, and nationally Democrats took back the House. Bottom, left: A poll worker at Fratney Elementary School in Milwaukee helps a voter fill out her voter registration form on Election Day. Bottom, right: A "Vote Here" sign at General Mitchell Elementary School in Cudahy, Wisconsin. | Patrick Cavan Brown for Politico Magazine

At the Clinton Rose Senior Center in a predominantly African-American neighborhood of Milwaukee, Donna, 59, voted with her 74-year-old mother, Ruth. They declined to give their last names. “Congress needs to make it better,” Donna said. “Costs are on the rise. It’s terrible.” Both mother and daughter voted Democratic.

In Cudahy, a white working-class city sandwiched between Lake Michigan and Milwaukee‘s Mitchell International Airport, voters who spoke to POLITICO Magazine while leaving the polling place inside General Mitchell Elementary School were unanimous in citing immigration and health care as the most important issues. All declined to give their surnames.

“Build the wall. Have a proper procedure and a policy and a system,” said Dick, 74, as his wife, Jane, 72, nodded in agreement. “They can’t just come in. They have to be screened and vetted.” Both voted Republican.

“I hope they keep the Affordable Care Act. I know too many people who don’t have health insurance,” said Karen, 65. “And I think everybody should be afforded health care.” She voted Democratic.

Congress needs “to protect and improve the ACA,” said Danette, a 61-year-old Democrat. “Yeah, it needs some tinkering, but it needs to stay.”

Mike, a 62-year-old Republican, said he wants Congress to “secure the border,” and that “health care needs to be totally revamped.”

Mostly, though, Mike said he wants the new Congress to get along.

Top: At the Cudahy City Hall polling station, Doug, a 51-year-old Democrat, told Politico Magazine that he'd like Congress to "get this health care thing straightened out." "Perhaps single-payer," he said. "I’m not concerned about pre-existing conditions for myself, but for my fellow Americans, of course.” Bottom: A man blows the leaves along a sidewalk lined by political signs in Wind Lake, Wisconsin. | Patrick Cavan Brown for Politico Magazine

Back in Wind Lake, voters gave Republican candidates a 3-to-1 edge up and down the ballot, much like they did in 2016. But statewide, Democrats bounced back from their 2016 losses. Sen. Tammy Baldwin won reelection easily, and state schools superintendent Tony Evers narrowly unseated Republican Gov. Scott Walker, who was running for a third term. The Evers-Walker race marked a break from a trend in Democratic victories this cycle: Walker decisively carried voters ages 50–64 by 7 points, and voters 65 and older by 11 points, but it wasn’t enough to overcome Evers’ double-digit margins with every age bracket under 50.

Even so, it was in keeping with another defining characteristic of 2018: the split between voters most concerned about health care and those most concerned about immigration. In exit polls, 46 percent of Wisconsin voters identified health care as the most important issue in the election; Evers won 73 percent of their votes. Twenty percent cited immigration as the top issue; Walker won their support by 41 points.

On election night, as Republican die-hards gathered for a watch party at the Ingleside Hotel in Pewaukee, hopes were high that the GOP could hold the governor’s seat and maybe even the U.S. House.

“I like what Trump’s doing,” said Gerry Kruschka, a 62-year-old Republican who owns Wild Wings Sportsmen’s Club, a hunting facility about an hour north of Milwaukee. “I wish more people would get on the Trump bandwagon and start pushing stuff through. I hope they get that wall built.”

A resident of Manitowoc, Wisconsin, walks along the breakwater to the Manitowoc Breakwater Light House looking out on Lake Michigan. | Patrick Cavan Brown for Politico Magazine

But the mood soured as the victories the Trump loyalists had hoped for moved out of reach. GOP Senate hopeful Leah Vukmir conceded to Baldwin behind a lectern bearing a sign reading “Wisconsin Strong.” After hours of the lead spot in the Evers-Walker race volleying back and forth, reports of tens of thousands of uncounted ballots from Milwaukee—a Democratic stronghold—deflated the room. And the likelihood of a Democratic-controlled House had, by then, already become an inevitability.

“I’m a little disappointed that when we had all the power, we didn’t get anything done,” Kruschka said. “It’s a little disheartening.”