Older Americans are often caregivers. And they vote.

Sandy Haas wants to pick the candidate she hopes will be the best president for her children and grandchildren.

But when she thinks about casting a ballot this fall, what's also on her mind is how much smaller she is than her husband Roy.

She barely tops 5 feet and weighs 100 pounds less than her 6-foot-2-inch-tall former-police officer husband, who has been severely disabled for more than a year. When she tries to help him transfer from the bed to his wheelchair, or into the shower, she's always worried he might fall.

Her osteoporosis means she's very likely to break a bone if he topples onto her. "Then we're really in a pickle," she said.

Like more than one in five Americans over 50, Haas, 68, of Goodyear, Arizona, spends a great deal of time every day caring for someone else.

Like other people her age, she intends to vote.

And in polls in four swing states, with data from Wisconsin available as of Tuesday morning, the AARP has shown that voters in her age bracket want to support a candidate who pays attention to caregivers.

So far, AARP has conducted polls in Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona and now Wisconsin, surveying well over 1,300 registered voters in each state, including more than 600 people aged 50 and above, and oversampling voters of color. Older voters in each of those states lean more heavily toward Trump than younger ones, especially white men, the polls show.

Caregiving is not a small part of older adult's lives, the surveys also show. More than a third of caregivers spend at least 20 hours a week taking care of a family member, whether that's driving them to appointments or the grocery store, helping them with daily tasks or simply keeping them safe.

"This is not a theoretical issue for people. If they're not involved on a daily basis, it's something on their radar screen," said Bob Ward, of Fabrizio Ward polling, who helped lead the polling on behalf of AARP.

"I don't think this is so much a new problem as a big hole that was left behind after the passage of the Affordable Care Act," said Jeff Liszt of Impact Research, who also helped conduct the AARP polls. "It's clearly a major issue."

Paying attention to caregiving could also provide an edge to either party, if they chose to make it a campaign issue, Ward added.

"There's an advantage to be had, if you try for it," he said.

Voting for the economy

Patricia Hanson's 85-year-old mother, Darlene Berg, has been in hospice and assisted living for the last six weeks, which has relieved her caregiving duties.

Before then, Hanson was taking Berg to at least one doctor's appointment a week, plus shopping, bill paying and anything she wanted done around the house. Counting the 30-minute drive each way and the 4- to 5-hours of each visit, Hanson said she spent a considerable amount of time supporting her mother.

The two also bickered regularly, mostly about the money her mother spent buying things on QVC and then asking Hanson to return, and complaining about various problems in her life, including her constant pain from stage 4 chronic kidney disease. "I have five brothers. I'm like 'Mom, call one of them and talk to them about your problems, because I can't help,'" Hanson sometimes said in frustration. "I felt like I was never doing enough."

Watching her mother, who Hanson said didn't take good care of herself, also was a reminder of Hanson's own aging. "I told my daughter just to shoot me," she said. "I don't want to be a burden like that. I really don't."

In some states, Hanson, 62, could have earned an income for the caregiving she provided her mother, but not in Nevada, where they both live, Hanson in Greenough and Berg, a former receptionist, in Sparks.

The whole experience with her mother has made her think more about aging as an election issue, said Hanson, who works for the Transportation Security Administration. "It's really important that I'm 100% mentally there," she said about her job ensuring passenger safety on flights from Reno's airport.

She was very concerned about the cost of medications before her mother's hospice program took her off nearly everything except some CBD gummies for pain. Berg's insurance wouldn't pay the full cost for Xarelto, which prevents blood clots and stroke, for instance, leaving the family to pick up an extra $300 a month, Hanson said. "Knock wood, I'm not on any (medications), but things could change."

Like Hanson, most caregivers tend to be on the younger side of the over-50 crowd ‒ a group that tends to be more Republican, the AARP data shows.

Hanson said she's "not thrilled" with former president Donald Trump, but she's going to vote for him anyway, because "financially, I think I was doing much better," when he was president.

Defending Social Security

Jane Cocking, 77, of Dallas, Georgia, said she's not happy with either of the current choices she has for president, though she'll go with pretty much anyone who isn't Trump. "I don't trust what Trump will do," said Cocking.

Like others her age, she cares about medication costs, Medicare and Social Security and doesn't believe that Trump or his people share her interest. "They've got a different agenda than taking care of older citizens."

In Wisconsin, 83% of voters ages 50 and older report that candidates’ positions on Social Security are very important in deciding whom to vote for in November, the newest poll showed, followed by 72% who say Medicare is important, 63% who say helping people stay in their homes as they age is key, and 62% who value the cost of prescription drugs.

Cocking's husband John was a banker for 25 years before leaving to start his own yard business. About five years ago, he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, though she started noticing a decline in his memory a decade earlier when he began asking her the same questions again and again.

Their finances are stable, Cocking said, as she prepared to head off on a family vacation to Europe last month. But the couple very much planned on having about one-third of their income come from Social Security, which they paid into for their whole working lives and counted on for their retirement. If it went away or were cut substantially, she said, "that would be a huge hit to our monthly budget in terms of lifestyle and what we planned for."

Like her, most of the 50-plus-year-olds in AARP's polls say Social Security is a major source of their income and it looms large in their minds, with 78% saying it will be a very or extremely important issue for them in their vote. In, Nevada, for example, voters 50-plus said they would be more likely to vote for candidates who commit to protecting Social Security and supporting family caregivers.

But among those who say Social Security is crucial, Trump was leading Biden by 9% in a poll in Arizona taken in late May and early June, suggesting Biden needs to do more to remind voters he's the one defending Social Security and Trump is threatening it, Ward, a conservative pollster said in a call with reporters when the Arizona results were released.

"If you're not talking about protecting Social Security, if you're talking about messing with Social Security, this should be a wake-up call that campaigns should be paying attention to," he said.

Cocking contrasted the cost of memory care with the cost of care for John's radiation treatment for prostate cancer three years ago, which ran $300,000, but "we did not pay one penny," she said, because of Medicare and supplemental insurance.

Cocking, an executive coach and expert in leadership development, is still able to work as a consultant. But all the money in the world isn't enough to address John's needs right now.

"It's a juggle between the neurologist, the urologist, the primary care physician and we have had home health care as well at times," she said. "It's not how I envisioned my life. Yet there are a lot of good things in my life," she said, mentioning her 9-year-old grandson who lives nearby, and two older grandchildren in Texas. She takes her husband and grandson to play mini-golf and on other nearby outings and her son gives her a respite once a week taking his son and her husband out for Saturday brunch to give her some alone time.

If Cocking needed to put John into a memory care facility, which typically costs $7,000 to $10,000 a month, she would go through their savings within a handful of years. "There are not many families that can afford that for very long," said Cocking, who moved to the United States when she was 19 and John was 23 and was recruited to join a new professional soccer team in Atlanta. "I don't see any movement afoot to help with those costs."

Working too hard

Michael Flaherty lived every parent's nightmare four years ago. His youngest daughter Taylor, now 26, was in an ATV accident the day before the pandemic locked everything down.

She was left in a wheelchair and Flaherty and his wife Sally, of Clear Lake, Wisconsin, were left with almost no help and no instructions on how to handle their newly disabled daughter. Plus, Flaherty, who turns 65 next week, is disabled himself. He's spent the last decade with a blood vessel disease that leaves him tired all the time and unable to work.

"I look at my situation and my daughter's situation and we could use a lot more support," said Flaherty, who remains deeply loyal to President Joe Biden, although he lives in a very red part of Wisconsin. "That whole situation I went through, nobody should have to go through."

They were sent home from the hospital three months after her accident with no resources, he said. From 7 a.m. until 10 p.m., 90% of his and Sally's time was spent caring for Taylor with no one coming to the house to help, and her medical team a 50-minute drive away, Flaherty said.

He had to go online to figure out how to help move her from one place to another. Once, when transfering her from the couch to a chair, he almost crashed both of them through the patio door window.

"There were days that my wife and I would just cry because we ddin't know what to do. We didn't know if it would get better," he said.

Luckily, Taylor has now learned how to transfer herself, and Flaherty said he and his wife are down to spending 20% to 25% of their time caring for her.

Still, he said, "we just need a system where we can take care of our own and not have to have senior citizens working that hard."

Stuck in the middle

The Haas family has been struggling since early 2023 when Roy had a health crisis that left him unable to walk more than a few steps, confused and lacking in safety awareness.

"It was like having a 2-year-old," Sandy Haas said of her husband, now 73, who had spent his life as a strong, capable person. "It just became all-consuming all day taking care of him."

A former nurse with a doctorate in education, Haas has always leaned conservative politically. "I don't like to see government take over," she said. "I'm very tempted to vote for someone who promises the moon, but I'm old enough to know there's no such thing and somebody's going to pay for it."

She still manages to teach two online classes a semester, which at least for now means she can afford to have someone come in once a week to help Roy shower and with the heavy cleaning.

Haas gets groceries delivered, because she can't leave him alone. He's fallen before and once started a fire on the stove. She was able to quickly put out because she noticed it right away.

"We're certainly not in poverty, but we're not wealthy," she said. "We're right stuck in the middle."

Although Haas recognizes her privilege, in some ways, people like her are the worst off. They don't qualify for the government support available to people without any financial resources, but if she moved into an assisted living facility where she'd have more help with Roy, she'd burn through their $120,000 in savings in a year or two. And she could easily live another 20 years herself.

What she really needs is just a little help, a few hours a week of caregiving and medical equipment and physical therapy "to keep this patient as mobile as possible," said Haas, who can't even help Roy with physical therapy, because of her own weakness and tremor. Medicare only paid for a limited number of physical therapy sessions.

Their two sons help out when they can, but one works nights. When she called the other "in absolute desperation" one night at 10:30, he drove the 45 minutes from his house to help her get Roy into bed.

All that has made it difficult for Haas to decide how she will cast her ballot this fall.

"Where I normally would have voted one way easy peasy nice and easy," she said, "I can tell you that at this time, I am very carefully on the fence and trying to make a good decision based on what I think is best for our country and for the people I'm leaving behind ‒ not just for my particular situation right now."