Widespread concern about President Biden’s age poses a growing threat to his re-election. A majority of voters who supported him in 2020 now believe he is too old to be, according to a new New York Times poll to effectively run the country Siena College.
The poll suggested a sea change in the attitudes of voters who supported Mr. Biden four years ago. A staggering 61 percent said he was “just too old” to be an effective president.
A significant share were even more concerned: Nineteen percent of those who voted for Mr. Biden in 2020 and 13 percent of those who said they would support him in November said the 81-year-old president’s age was such an issue that he was no longer up to the task.
Concerns about Mr. Biden’s age cut across generations, gender, race and education, underscoring the president’s failure to address concerns within his own party and Republican attacks that portray him as senile. Seventy-three percent of all registered voters said he was too old to be effective and 45 percent expressed the belief he couldn’t do the job.
That unease, long evident in polls and in quiet conversations with Democratic officials, appears to be increasing as Mr. Biden nears his party’s official nomination. The survey was conducted more than two weeks after scrutiny of his age intensified in early February, when a special prosecutor described him in a report as a “well-intentioned, older man with a poor memory” and “decreasing abilities with age.”
Previous polls suggest voters’ reservations about Mr. Biden’s age have grown over time. In six top contenders surveyed in October, 55 percent of those who voted for him in 2020 said they believed he was too old to be an effective president, a significant increase from the 16 percent of Democrats who did Concern was shared by a slightly different group of swing states in 2020.
Voters have not expressed the same concerns about Donald J. Trump, who at 77 is just four years younger than Mr. Biden. Their likely rematch would make them the oldest presidential candidates in history.
If re-elected, Mr Biden would break his own record as the oldest sitting president, while Mr Trump would be the second oldest if he wins. Mr. Trump would be 82 at the end of the term and Mr. Biden would be 86.
Otto Abad, 50, an independent voter in Scott, La., said he voted for Mr. Biden in 2020 but planned to flip his support in favor of Mr. Trump if they faced off again. Last time, after the chaos of the Trump administration, he wanted a less divisive figure in the White House. Now he fears that Mr. Biden is not quite ready for a second term.
“I didn’t know at the time whether he was in that mental state,” Mr. Abad said. “He has aged a lot. With the exception of Trump, every president seems to age significantly during their presidency.”
He added: “Trump, one of the few good things I would say about him is that nothing seems to bother him. He seems to be in the same mental state as he was 10 years ago, 12 years ago, 15 years ago. He’s like a cockroach.”
Mr. Abad is anything but alone. Just 15 percent of voters who supported Mr. Trump in 2020 said they thought he was now too old to be an effective president, and 42 percent of all voters said the same — a much smaller share than Mr. Biden . Polls from the 2020 campaign show that the share of voters who believe Mr. Trump is too old has also risen over the past four years, but not as dramatically as Mr. Biden.
In the most recent Times poll, 19 percent of all voters said Mr. Trump’s age was such a big problem that he couldn’t handle the presidency. And in a sign of Republicans’ far greater confidence in their likely nominee, fewer than 1 percent of voters who supported Mr. Trump in 2020 said his age made him unfit.
Mr Biden and his allies have dismissed concerns about his age and mental capacity as unfair and inaccurate. His campaign said the coalition would rally around the president again once it fully recognized that Mr. Trump could win back the White House. It also argues that Mr. Biden faced age concerns in 2020 and still won.
But Mr Biden is now four years older and, given the inexorable march of time, it may be impossible to fully convince voters of his age. The survey shows that concerns about him are not only devastating, but are now also linked to how many voters see him.
Calvin Nurjadin, a Democrat from Cedar Park, Texas, who plans to endorse Mr. Biden in November, said he was unconvinced by politicians in his party who have publicly flaunted their direct observations of Mr. Biden’s mental acuity.
“You’ve just seen the clips of him having memories on stage and, you know, during the debates and discussions, where he often freezes,” said Mr. Nurjadin, who is in charge of data entry. “The fact that he’s sharp and fit isn’t very convincing.”
Even though the country is deeply divided and Republican voters overwhelmingly view Mr. Biden’s age negatively, Democrats appear no more concerned about the impact of time on Mr. Trump than on Mr. Biden. Similar shares of Democrats said each man was too old to be effective.
The poll sought to understand more precisely how voters feel about Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump’s abilities. The survey first asked whether each man was too old to be effective. Voters who said “yes” were asked a follow-up question about whether that age was such a problem that Mr. Biden or Mr. Trump was unable to handle the job. This was a stronger measure that prompted voters to consider the candidate’s fundamental suitability for office.
Shermaine Elmore, 44, a small business owner in Baltimore, voted for Mr. Biden four years ago and supported the Democratic candidate as she had in previous elections.
But he said he made more money under Mr. Trump and blamed inflation and gasoline prices for his losses during the Biden administration. He planned to vote for Mr. Trump in the fall.
Of Mr. Biden, he said: “I don’t think he’s in the best health to make a decision when the country needs the president to make a decision.”
Samuel Friday, 28, a database administrator and Democrat in Goose Creek, S.C., said he planned to vote for Mr. Biden but had some concerns about whether the president would survive a second term.
“As far as his health goes, I think people have said he’s as healthy as he can be, which is always a positive,” he said. “But once you reach a certain age, there is a higher risk that the president will die in office. And I’m not sure Kamala Harris is the choice I would want for the presidency.”
In fact, the vice president is viewed no more positively than Mr. Biden. Only 36 percent of all voters said they had a positive view of Ms. Harris.
About two-thirds of those who voted for Mr. Biden in 2020 expressed a positive opinion of Ms. Harris, almost the same as for the president. And in a direct duel with Mr. Trump, Ms. Harris did no better than Mr. Biden, losing by six percentage points.
While Democrats are still divided, they appear to be slowly coming together behind Biden’s offer. Forty-five percent of Democratic primary voters said he should not be their party’s nominee, compared to 50 percent who expressed that view in July.
Margaret Stewart, a retiree from Westland, Michigan, said she would have preferred a younger candidate, but Mr. Biden’s age didn’t particularly bother her. The president, she said, sometimes makes verbal missteps when he is stressed but mentally capable of assuming the office of president.
“Some of the little flaws he had, for one, he always had them,” she said, “and I honestly think his memory is better than mine was when I was in my 40s.” She added: ” He’s not senile.”
Overall, voters generally express a more positive opinion of Mr. Biden than Mr. Trump. Fifty-one percent of registered voters said the president had the personality and temperament to be president, compared with 41 percent who said the same about Mr. Trump. Among Republicans, 27 percent said Mr. Trump lacked these qualities, while 14 percent of Democrats said the same about Mr. Biden.
Brian Wells, 35, a lawyer from Huntsville, Alabama, described himself as a reluctant supporter of Mr. Biden. He was frustrated that there were no other options for the top presidential nomination and was convinced that Mr. Biden was not fully up to the duties of his office.
Still, Mr. Wells plans to cast his vote for the president’s re-election in November.
“He is incompetent. He is obviously having difficulty carrying out his duties,” he said. “He has clearly reached the point where he is too old for the job. But he’s still one step ahead of Trump.”
Camille Baker contributed reporting.
The New York Times/Siena College poll of 980 registered voters nationwide was conducted February 25-28, 2024 via mobile and landline phones with live interviewers. The margin of sampling error for the presidential election question is plus or minus 3.5 percentage points among registered voters. Crosstabs and methodology can be found here.
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2024-03-03 10:03:35
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