In dozens of interviews over three weeks in this rapidly aging suburb of Denver, people talked about a  collision of interests, and perhaps even more crucial, of generations. On one side are younger voters who are championing cuts in spending; on the other, older ones who want to retain the services they counted on getting when they retired.

Specific government programs like Medicare are at issue. Beyond that, many people said they perceived a deeper debate about fairness, equity and ? at its core ? starkly different visions of the nation?s future and how public resources should be allotted in a time of straitened circumstances.

Last month?s special election for a Congressional seat in western New York, which turned in large part on older voters, offered a preview of the tensions. The Democratic candidate?s attacks on a Republican plan to overhaul Medicare seemed to resonate in the district, where a majority of the registered voters are 45 or older.

?The outcome there certainly suggests that there is an old-age Medicare voting bloc,? said Robert H. Binstock, a political scientist who studies aging at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.

Older voters have always tended to turn out more heavily than others at the polls, especially when they have issues at stake. But in the past, their generational differences with younger voters, at least in presidential voting, have been less clear. Now they are being mobilized by groups like AARP, which recently issued a national appeal to members.

?You should not have to worry that you can?t afford to visit your doctor,? the appeal said. ?We need to flood the halls of Congress with letters telling them to keep unfair cuts to Medicare and Social Security out of the discussion.?

In just two weeks, more than 200,000 e-mails filled inboxes in Washington.

Some experts say they believe a genuinely distinct older voting bloc could emerge. But either way, they say, there is no doubt that a season of political focus on the issues of aging ? and a search by both parties for the allegiance of older voters ? has begun.

?Age is up for grabs,? said Fernando Torres-Gil, the director of the Center for Policy Research on Aging at the University of California, Los Angeles. ?In the last election it was about the young vote, and Hispanic vote ? this time the issue is age.?

In interviews here in Jefferson County ? politically mixed, with more baby boomers than any other county in battleground Colorado ? many people said that their views and hopes about retirement, or the prospect of it around the corner, had fundamentally changed since the economic downturn.

Lin Stevens, 56, was attending a job-search class at a local shopping mall with her husband, Rick Craig, who has managed to find only temporary work in recent years. Their unemployment checks have run out, Ms. Stevens said, and they have no health insurance.

?My investments took a bath,? she said, ?then being out of work for a few years ? I?m sorry, but there?s not that much left. I?m going to need Social Security and Medicare.?

Their politics are in flux too. Ms. Stevens drifted from Republican roots to vote for President Obama in 2008 and plans to do so again next year. Mr. Craig, who also voted for Mr. Obama, said he was less certain about 2012.

The landscape of battered states and municipalities agonizing over public employee pensions and benefits and cuts to school programs has already put older interests and younger interests at potential loggerheads ? and set the table for the debate about how society should divide its resources.

?There could be an opportunity to talk about what kind of society we want,? said Nancy LeaMond, an executive vice president at AARP. She said that the needs of all generations have to be balanced, and that AARP members are worried about their children and grandchildren as cuts to education and other programs ripple through budget-battered states.