The post begins by listing all the major party candidates for President going back to Stevenson v. Eisenhower as well as their ages. The author is trying to see if there is some pattern that emerges regarding the age of the candidates. Do younger candidates tend to win? Do older candidates tend to win? A reasonable question, given the fact that Senator McCain would is the oldest candidate ever to run for President (for a first term).
But then the whole thing goes off the rails. After listing all the candidates and their ages, the author, J Ro, comes to this conclusion:
Republican candidates who win are almost as a rule older then their opponents. Democrats who win are younger than theirs.
Hmm. Republican winners are older, while Democratic winners are younger. Fascinating. Or is it?
Out of the 14 races since 1952, in 10 of them, the Democratic candidate has been younger than the Republican, so of course when the Democrat wins he's younger than the Republican and when the Republican wins he's older. That's not a function of any kind of weird age preference from the general election voters, its a function of the fact that the Democratic candidates are almost always younger. Take 1960 as an example. JFK is younger than Richard Nixon, and he wins. So J Ro can say, "Look, the Democratic winner is younger than the guy he beat." But if the election had gone the other way, J Ro could just as easily have said, "Look, the Republican candidate is older than the guy he beat." That, my friends, it what I call a useless conclusion.
The relevant observation here is NOT that Democratic winners are younger than their opponents, but Republican winners are older than their opponents, the relevant observation, rather, is that over the past fifty years Democrats have tended to nominate candidates who are younger than their Republican counterparts. Some of the young'uns have won while others have lost. That's it. That's the lesson from the past fifty years when it comes to age.
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