Jay Leno recently made fun of a commercial for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, in which she referred to playing pinochle as a child at her grandfather’s lake house in Pennsylvania.
“Pinochle?” Mr. Leno said quizzically to his late-night audience. “Well, that’ll help with the young voters, huh? I mean, come on. What kids aren’t playing pinochle now?”
The joke about the old card game captured a truth about this year’s Democratic primary: Mrs. Clinton has generally bypassed younger voters. And they have bypassed her, flocking instead to her rival, Senator Barack Obama. At the same time, she has attracted older voters, those who grew up in the pre-Internet era and might actually have played pinochle.
In a campaign where demographics seem to be destiny, one of the most striking factors is the segregation of voters by age. In state after state, older voters have formed a core constituency for Mrs. Clinton, who is 60, while younger voters have coalesced around Mr. Obama, who is 46. Age has been one of the most consistent indicators of how someone might vote — more than sex, more than income, more than education. Only race is a stronger predictor of voting than age, and then only if a voter is black, not if he or she is white.
Age is likely to play a particularly strong role in the Democratic primary Tuesday in Pennsylvania. The outmigration of young people has left the state with the second-highest proportion of people over 65 in the country, after Florida. Fifty-eight percent of registered Democrats are older than 45, a consistent dividing line in the race.
Continue reading the main storyAs an enduring part of Mrs. Clinton’s coalition — which also includes blue-collar workers, Roman Catholics and women — older voters are expected to vote lopsidedly for her.
Rosalie Hertzog, 60, a teacher, saw Mrs. Clinton in West Chester over the weekend. “I can recognize that same age area and what we’ve gone through as women together,” Ms. Hertzog said. “I’m not saying I’m voting for her just as a woman. But I recognize all the hardships that we’ve had to overcome, and to think we’ve even gotten this far is wonderful, it really is.”
Experience also matters to Ms. Hertzog.
“It’s not that I don’t like Barack,” she said. “I just don’t think he’s seasoned enough.”
According to exit polls conducted by Edison/Mitofsky in the states that have voted so far, 57 percent of voters 65 and older have supported Mrs. Clinton and 36 percent have supported Mr. Obama. Most of the Clinton voters say they want a candidate with experience.
Of voters age 30 and younger, 59 percent have supported Mr. Obama and 38 percent have supported Mrs. Clinton. Most of Mr. Obama’s supporters say they want change.
Part of the reason is simply identification with one’s own age bracket, which both candidates have tried to exploit.
“This is classic generational politics,” said Gordon F. De Jong, a demographer at Pennsylvania State University. “Their identification with one candidate or the other has to do with the time when voters were socialized.”
Mrs. Clinton may not have appreciated it a couple of weeks ago when her husband suggested that she misstated the circumstances of her trip to Bosnia because she was 60, tired and forgetful; on the other hand, maybe some voters could relate.
“If I was in my 20s, maybe I’d support Obama,” said Germaine Donahue, 64, who lives in Sullivan County, in northeastern Pennsylvania, and helps run a cleaning service. “But life tempers you. I’m with Hillary.”
Sullivan County has the highest concentration of people over 65 in the state, but it is sparsely populated and largely Republican. Only 1,770 people, or 39 percent of all registered voters in the county, are Democrats. Mrs. Donahue, who is the Democratic county vice chairwoman, gathered a few of them the other night in Laporte township to talk about the campaign.
John Peterman, 85, a former Navy engineer, said he supported Mrs. Clinton because “the world is not ready for a black president.” His wife, Mary, 81, agreed with him.
Noel Stein, 72, and his wife, Judy, 67, both like Mrs. Clinton. Mrs. Stein said she liked her “because she’s a woman” and Mr. Stein said he liked her because of her husband.
Arla Hacker, 49, a bank teller, said she also liked Mrs. Clinton because she had Ms. Hacker’s economic interests at heart. “The people who are 18 and 20 years old don’t know what it’s like to sit in a gas line,” she said. “Kids today don’t understand how tough it is. Obama just talks about it.”
But Derek Davis, 68, said he was voting for Mr. Obama. He said Mrs. Clinton was too adversarial. “Let’s give the young guy a try,” Mr. Davis said.
Mr. De Jong, the demographer, said the state was older than most others because it had been losing a larger percentage of its young people for a longer time, largely because they were looking for jobs. That not only reduced the number of young people, it also lowered the birth rate.
Neither campaign likes to say that it appeals chiefly to a particular age group. “We’re not conceding any demographic,” said Nick Clemons, a senior adviser for Mrs. Clinton in Pennsylvania.
On the other hand, they cannot ignore the obvious, or the reliable cushion that it provides.
“Barack Obama has no experience and no plans. He just works on emotions, and this is why young people like him,” said Kimberly Romm, 44, who is self-employed and heard Mrs. Clinton speak at Haverford College. “People who are more mature analyze things. They’re wiser.”
A picture caption on Tuesday with an article about a split in the Democratic primaries between older and younger voters misidentified a Clinton supporter from Sullivan County, Pennsylvania. Of the two women shown looking over a pamphlet, Germaine Donahue was at left. (The woman on the right was not identified.)
