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Widespread concerns about President Biden’s age deepen the threat to his reelection, with a majority of voters who supported him in 2020 now saying he is effective respondents said they were too old to lead the country. Siena University.
The survey pointed to a fundamental shift in how voters who supported Biden four years ago view him. In fact, 61% said they think he is “too old” to be an effective president.
Significant proportions are even more concerned, with 19% of those who voted for Biden in 2020 and 13% of those who said they would support Biden in November saying the 81-year-old president’s age is a very big problem. Yes, they said they supported Mr. Biden. I can no longer do the job.
Concerns about Biden’s age span generations, genders, races and education, highlighting the president’s inability to overcome both concerns within his own party and attacks from Republicans who characterize him as senile. became. Seventy-three percent of all registered voters said he was too old and incompetent, and 45% said they believed he was unable to perform his job.
Those fears have been surfacing for years in polls and quiet conversations with Democratic Party officials, but they appear to have intensified as Mr. Biden formally moves toward winning the party’s nomination. The poll came more than two weeks after scrutiny of his age intensified in early February, with the special counsel calling him a “well-meaning old man with a poor memory” in a report. “Decrease in ability due to aging.”
Previous polling suggests that voters’ concerns about Biden’s age have grown over time. In six battleground states surveyed in October, 55% of those who voted for him in 2020 said they thought he was too old to be an effective president; That’s a significant increase from the 16% of Democrats who shared their concerns. Top battleground states in 2020.
Voters have not expressed similar concerns about Donald J. Trump, who at 77 is just four years younger than Biden. If there is a rematch between the two, he would likely become the oldest presidential candidate in history.
If Biden is re-elected, he will become the oldest sitting president, and if Trump wins, he will be the second-oldest. Trump will be 82 and Biden 86 when his term ends.
Otto Abad, a 50-year-old independent voter from Scott, Louisiana, said he voted for Biden in 2020 but plans to switch his support to Trump if he faces off again. Last time, he said he wanted a less divisive person in the White House after the turmoil of the Trump administration. Now, he worries that Biden is not fully prepared for a second term.
“If he was in this state of mind, we didn’t realize it at the time,” Abad said. “He’s aged a lot. Every president seems to have aged a lot during his term, except for Trump.”
He added: “About Trump, one of the few good things I can say about him is that he doesn’t seem to care about anything. He’s in the same mental state he was in 10, 12, 15 years ago. He’s like a cockroach.”
Abbado is far from alone. Just 15% of voters who supported Trump in 2020 think he is too old to be an effective president, compared to 42% of all voters who said the same. That was much lower than Biden. The share of voters who think Mr. Trump is too old has also increased over the past four years, according to polls from the 2020 campaign, but not as dramatically as Mr. Biden.
In the latest Times poll, 19% of all voters said Trump’s age is a problem and makes him unfit to serve as president. And in a sign that Republicans have far more confidence in reliable candidates, less than 1% of voters who supported Trump in 2020 said they were incompetent because of age.
Biden and his allies have rejected concerns about his age and mental acuity as unfair and inaccurate. His campaign says the coalition will rally around the president again once he fully realizes he has a chance of regaining the White House. Biden also claims he faced age concerns in 2020 but still won.
But Biden is now four years older, and given the inexorable passage of time, it may be impossible to completely reassure voters about his age. Polls show that concerns about him are not only harmful, but are now intertwined with how many voters view him.
Calvin Nurjaddin, a Democrat from Cedar Park, Texas, who plans to support Mr. Biden in November, is unconvinced by politicians in his own party who publicly exaggerate first-hand observations about Mr. Biden’s mental acuity. said.
“You’ve probably seen the footage of him reciting his memories on stage and then freezing in the middle of a debate or discussion,” said Nurjaddin, who works in data entry. “It’s not very convincing that he’s sharp and healthy.”
The country is deeply divided, with Republican voters having an overwhelmingly negative view of Mr. Biden’s age, although Democrats do not appear to be more concerned about the impact of time on Mr. Trump than on Mr. Biden. can not see. Similar Democratic lawmakers said their members are too old to be effective.
The poll sought to better understand what voters think about the abilities of Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump. The survey first asked whether each man was too old to be effective. Voters who answered “yes” were asked a follow-up question about whether age was such a problem that Biden or Trump would not be fit to hold office, asking voters to assess the candidate’s basic suitability as president. This was a strong measure to encourage consideration of the issue.
Charmaine Elmore, 44, a small business owner in Baltimore, voted for Biden four years ago, supporting the Democratic candidate, just as she did in the previous election.
But he blamed losses during the Biden administration on inflation and gas prices, and said the company made more money under Trump. He had planned to vote for Trump this fall.
“If the country needs the president to make a decision, I don’t think he’s healthy enough to make that decision,” he said of Biden.
Samuel Friday, 28, a database administrator and Democrat from Goose Creek, South Carolina, said he plans to vote for Biden but has some concerns about whether the president will survive a second term. .
“As far as his health, I think people have said he’s as healthy as he can be, which is always a positive thing,” he said. “But once you reach a certain age, the risk of a president dying in office increases. And I don’t know if Kamala Harris is going to be the person I want to be president.”
In fact, the vice president is not viewed as positively as Biden. Only 36% of voters said he had a favorable view of Harris.
About two-thirds of people who voted for Biden in 2020 had a positive view of Harris, about the same as their support for the president. And in a head-to-head matchup with Trump, Harris did no better than Biden, losing by a six-point margin.
The Democratic Party remains divided, but appears to be gradually coming together behind Biden’s candidacy. Forty-five percent of Democratic primary voters said he should not be the party’s nominee, compared to 50% who said so in July.
Margaret Stewart, a retiree from Westland, Michigan, said she would have preferred a younger candidate, but she doesn’t particularly care about Biden’s age. She said that although the president sometimes makes gaffes when he is stressed, he is mentally fit to serve as president.
“He’s had some little failings, and one of them is that he keeps living with them,” she said. “And honestly, I think his memory is better than mine was when I was in my 40s.” She also added, “He’s not an old man.”
Overall, voters generally have a more favorable view of Biden than Trump. Fifty-one percent of registered voters said the president has the right personality and temperament to be president, compared to 41% who said the same about Trump. While 27% of Republicans say Trump lacks these traits, 14% of Democrats say the same about Biden.
Brian Wells, 35, a lawyer from Huntsville, Alabama, said he is a passive supporter of Biden. He was frustrated by the lack of other options at the top of the presidential field and believed Biden was not fully up to the responsibilities of the presidency.
Still, Wells plans to vote for reelection as president in November.
“He is incompetent. He clearly has a hard time fulfilling his duties.” “He’s obviously reached the stage where he’s too old for the job. But he’s still one step ahead of Trump.”
camille baker Contributed to the report.
The New York Times/Siena College poll of 980 registered voters nationwide was conducted from February 25 to 28, 2024, using live interviewers and by cell and landline telephone. The margin of sampling error for the multiple-choice question on the presidential ballot is plus or minus 3.5. Percentage points of registered voters. Crosstabs and methodology are available here.
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