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Election Day Dispatches

Entry 10: Mitt Romney is winning Florida’s seniors big time.

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Justin Sullivan/Getty.

Paul Ryan's Medicare plan was supposed to cost Mitt Romney the state of Florida. Boy, it sure wasn’t an issue with voters there. In 2008, President Obama lost voters over 65 years of age to John McCain, 53 percent to 45 percent. That was in keeping with the traditional fact that Democrats typically lose seniors. But now Obama is doing much worse in Florida. He's down 26 points to Romney according to the exit polls. Fifty-eight percent of seniors voted for Romney and 42 percent voted for Obama. Florida operatives say that two years of attacks on the president's Affordable Care Act were just too hard to beat back.  

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John Dickerson is Slate's chief political correspondent and author of On Her Trail. He can be reached at slatepolitics@gmail.com. Read his series on the presidency and his series on risk. Follow him on Twitter.