In New Hampshire, for instance, seniors backed GOP Senate candidate Kelly Ayotte over her Democratic challenger by 33 points. In the narrow Illinois Senate contest, Republican Mark Kirk won older voters by 22 points. And In Delaware, they were the only age group to back tea party favorite Christine O’Donnell, by an 11-point margin.

“I’ve been saying since August 2009, that there was a tsunami — in this case a senior citizen tsunami — headed towards Capitol Hill,” said Jim Martin, chairman of the 60 Plus Association, a conservative campaign group targeted toward older voters. “That tsunami came ashore.”

The 60 Plus Association, it should be noted, played a key role, along with groups like American Crossroads, in drumming up fears among the elderly about the health care reform bill’s efforts to fight the rising cost of Medicare — a cause that Republicans had long championed but now found opportune to decry. Billing itself a conservative alternative to the AARP, the 60 Plus Association served in many ways as an extension of the American Crossroads-led network of shadow GOP organizations devoted to electing Republicans last election cycle. Carl Forti, a veteran Republican operative and the political director of American Crossroads, also handled the PR and media profile of the 60 Plus group, which spent nearly $6 million dollars in independent expenditures attacking House Democrats who voted for health care reform.

Combine the swing among seniors with the fact that young people largely stayed home from the polls last Tuesday, and the landslide seem less like a shift in the national opinion and more like the product of simple demographic mathematics. Here’s a voter turnout graph Matt Yglesias provided last week, which speaks to this point:

“President Bush did what no previous has ever done in my forty-some years in this town,” said Martin. “He boldly called for reform of this system that has served seniors well, but now, according to a majority of citizens, it’s in need of an overhaul.”

Later, Martin put the organization’s campaign in more historical context. “Some 24 countries — back in 1995, the first year that we stuck our toe in the water, touching the third rail to see if we were gonna be electrocuted or not — 24 countries around the globe had started moving toward this personalized system,” he said. “Now about 40 countries a dozen years later. So I think it is the wave of the future.”

Here’s more video from the event, where Ryan Ellis, the sharp-tongued Director of Policy at Americans for Tax Reform (he jokes that an easy question from the audience is proof that it’s “softball season”), makes the pitch for private accounts.

Sen. John McCain visited the state a few weeks ago to stump for Chambliss, and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin joined the effort today:

In the months and the years ahead in Washington and in every state capital, we must build our case for reform of government with actions and not just words. And thankfully, Saxby has built a record of real achievement in service to his state and to his country. And that’s exactly the kind of man we need in Washington.

Presumedly, Palin was referring to actions other than Chambliss equating a Vietnam War hero with Osama bin Laden, the multiple deferments that kept himself from that war, or his more recent defense of a sugar-company (which also happens to be a large campaign contributor) following a deadly refinery fire.

But of course there’s much more at stake here than just Chambliss’s career.

In the wake of November’s elections, Democrats control 58 Senate seats, including those held by the two independents who caucus with Democrats. If they could pull the Georgia seat from Chambliss, Democrats would be that much closer to a filibuster-proof 60-member majority. (Minnesota, which is in the middle of recounting votes after a tight Senate race, could be no. 60).

Indeed, Chambliss, Palin and other Republicans are framing the Georgia election as a kind-of last stand against a single-party dictatorship.

“We need Saxby because we need checks and balances in Washington,” Palin said. “And we will not have that if Saxby is not reelected, Georgia.”

Chambliss has a lead of 3-5 percent in the polls, according to The L.A. Times. Thirty hours from now we’ll know how accurate they were.

Facing a runoff election in a few weeks — and recently hit with a subpoena to testify about his ties to the sugar company whose refinery exploded in February, killing 14 — the Georgia Republican has turned his frustration on the media, giving a light shove to a cameraman yesterday who appears to get to close to the embattled senator.

The Democrats are hoping to make the subpoena (not to mention the shove) an issue in Chambliss’s Dec. 2 runoff against Democratic challenger Jim Martin — which, by the way, can’t come quickly enough.

Can someone please make this election season end?