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.