A recent poll found Oregon’s seniors are more likely than any other age group to vote against Hillary Clinton should the former first lady and secretary of state run as the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate in 2016.

But while the poll found people over 65 make up one of the state’s most conservative voting blocks, it also found they are not nearly as conservative as seniors who live in other states.

“That’s somewhat surprising,” said Tom Jensen with the Raleigh, N.C.-based Public Policy Polling firm. “Your seniors are not leaning as strongly toward Republican candidates as everybody else’s seniors.”

Last month, Jensen’s firm asked nearly 1,000 Oregon voters if they would vote for Clinton or one of five potential Republican presidential nominees — former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, and U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky. — if the 2016 presidential election were held today.

It found that Clinton was a clear favorite among the state’s voters as a whole. Not only did the presumptive Democratic nominee get more than 50 percent of the vote in each contest, but she also beat her opponents by a margin of at least 12 percentage points.

But it would have been completely different had Oregon’s seniors been the ones making the call.

The poll found that among voters who were older than 65 — a group that makes up 10 percent of the state’s registered voters, according to the state elections office — Clinton would have lost to Bush by one percentage point, tied with Huckabee and beat the other candidates by margins of one or two percentage points.

Jensen said he wasn’t surprised Clinton didn’t perform as well among the state’s oldest voters as she did among the population as a whole or among its youngest voters because older voters are usually more conservative than their younger counterparts.

But he was surprised by how well the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee did among seniors. His firm did a national poll that found Clinton would lose to Huckabee by seven percentage points, Christie by six percentage points and Cruz by three percentage points if the election were held today and seniors were the only voters.

That national poll found she would still beat Paul but, by a margin of five percentage points.

“It’s pretty much a tie among seniors in Oregon,” he said, explaining his company was considering Oregon to be a safe win for Clinton or any other Democratic nominee because the state’s oldest voters were so evenly split along party lines.

In nonpolitical news, the poll also found people over age 65 liked having someone pump their gas and did not want the Oregon law prohibiting self-service to change any time soon.

According to the poll, 55 percent of Oregon seniors raised an objection to changing the state’s gas-pump rules while 34 percent supported a change and 11 percent didn’t know where they stood. Those between age 46 and 65 objected to any changes in this rule, but by a one percentage point margin, while voters 45 or younger wanted to see it change.

“Older people just tend to want to be doing things the way they’ve always been done,” said Jensen.

— Reporter: 541-617-7816, mmclean@bendbulletin.com