The majority of Biden’s 2020 voters now say he is too old to be effective
Widespread concerns about President Biden’s age are posing a growing threat to his re-election bid, with a majority of voters who supported him in 2020 now saying he is too old to effectively lead the country, according to a new poll from The New York Times and Siena College.
The survey indicated a fundamental shift in the way voters who supported Mr. Biden four years ago have come to view him. A striking 61 percent said they thought he was “simply too old” to be an effective president.
A significant share were even more concerned: Nineteen percent of those who voted for Biden in 2020, and 13 percent of those who said they would support him in November, said the 81-year-old president’s age would be such a problem was that he was no longer able to do the job.
The doubts about Mr. Biden’s age cut across generations, gender, race and education, underscoring the president’s inability to assuage concerns within his own party as well as Republican attacks portraying him as senile. Seventy-three percent of all registered voters said he was too old to be effective, and 45 percent believed he couldn’t do the job.
This unease, long reflected in polls and in quiet conversations with Democratic officials, appears to be growing as Biden moves toward formally clinching his party’s nomination. The poll was taken more than two weeks after scrutiny into his age intensified in early February, when a special counsel described him in a report as a “well-meaning elderly man with poor memory” and “diminished faculties in old age.”
Previous polls show that voters’ reservations about Biden’s age have increased over time. In the top six states 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 sharp increase from the 16 percent of Democrats who shared this concern in a slightly different way. 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 beat 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 switch his support to Mr. Trump if they faced off again. Last time, he wanted a less divisive figure in the White House after the chaos of the Trump administration. Now he worries that Mr. Biden is not quite ready for a second term.
“If he was in that kind of mental condition, I didn’t know it at the time,” Mr. Abad said. ‘He’s gotten a lot older. With the exception of Trump, every president seems to age a lot during his presidency.”
He added: “Trump, one of the few things I would say good about him is that nothing seems to bother him. It seems like he’s in the same mental shape he was 10 years ago, 12 years ago, 15 years ago. He is like a cockroach.”
Mr. Abad is far from alone. Only 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 lower share than for Mr. Biden. Polls on the 2020 race show that the share of voters who think Trump is too old has also increased over the past four years, but not as dramatically as with Biden.
In the most recent Times poll, 19 percent of all voters said Trump’s age was such a problem that he was unable to assume the presidency. And in a sign of Republicans’ far greater confidence in their likely nominee, less than 1 percent of voters who supported Trump in 2020 said his age made him incompetent.
Mr Biden and his allies have dismissed concerns about his age and mental acuity as unfair and inaccurate. His campaign says the coalition will regroup around the president once it fully recognizes that Trump could win back the White House. It is also claimed that Mr Biden faced age issues in 2020 and still won.
Yet Mr. Biden is now four years older, and it may be impossible to fully reassure voters about his age given the inexorable march of time. The poll shows that concerns about him are not only pernicious, but are now intertwined with the way many voters view him.
Calvin Nurjadin, a Democrat from Cedar Park, Texas, who plans to support Mr. Biden in November, said he was unconvinced by politicians in his party who have publicly played up their direct observations of Mr. Biden’s mental acuity.
“You’ve just seen the clips of, you know, he has memories on stage and, you know, during debates and discussions where he kind of freezes up,” said Mr. Nurjadin, who does data entry. “The fact that he is sharp and fit is not very convincing.”
While the country is bitterly divided and Republican voters have an overwhelmingly negative view of Mr. Biden’s age, Democrats appear no more concerned about the effects of time on Mr. Trump than on Mr. Biden. Similar shares of Democrats said every man was too old to be effective.
The poll sought to understand more deeply how voters felt about the abilities of Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump. 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 an issue that Mr. Biden or Mr. Trump was unable to take the job, a stronger measure that prompted voters to consider take into account the candidate’s basic suitability for office.
Shermaine Elmore, 44, a small business owner in Baltimore, voted for Biden four years ago and supported the Democratic candidate, as she has in previous elections.
But he said he made more money under Trump, blaming inflation and gas prices for his losses during the Biden administration. He planned to vote for Trump this 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 a 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 come out and said he’s as healthy as he can be, which is always a positive,” he said. “But when you get to a certain age, there’s a greater risk that the president will die in office. And I’m not sure that Kamala Harris would be the choice I would want for president.”
Indeed, the vice president is viewed no more positively than Mr. Biden. Only 36 percent of all voters said they had a favorable view of Ms. Harris.
About two-thirds of those who voted for Mr. Biden in 2020 had a favorable opinion of Ms. Harris, almost the same as the president. And in a head-to-head matchup with Mr. Trump, Ms. Harris did no better than Mr. Biden, losing by six percentage points.
While Democrats remain divided, they also appear to be slowly uniting behind Biden’s bid. Forty-five percent of Democratic primary voters said he should not be their party’s nominee, up from 50 percent who expressed this view in July.
Margaret Stewart, a retiree from Westland, Michigan, said she would have preferred a younger nominee but was not particularly concerned about Mr. Biden’s age. The president, she said, sometimes makes verbal missteps when he is stressed but mentally fit to serve as president.
“Some of the little problems he had, one, he always had,” she said, “and I honestly think his memory is better than mine was when I was in my 40s.” She added: “He is not senile.”
Overall, voters generally have warmer views of Mr. Biden than of Mr. Trump. Fifty-one percent of registered voters said the president had the personality and temperament to be president, compared to 41 percent who said the same about Mr. Trump. Among Republicans, 27 percent said Trump lacked these qualities, while 14 percent of Democrats said the same about 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 choices for the top of the presidential ticket, and was convinced that Mr. Biden was not fully up to the duties of the office.
Still, Mr. Wells plans to cast his vote to re-elect the president in November.
‘He’s incompetent. He is clearly having difficulty fulfilling his duties,” he said. “He’s clearly reached the point where he’s too old for the job. But he is still one step ahead of Trump.”
Camille Baker reporting contributed.
The New York Times/Siena College survey of 980 registered voters nationwide was conducted on cell and landline phones from February 25 to 28, 2024, using live interviewers. The margin of sampling error for the presidential vote choice question is plus or minus 3.5 percentage points among registered voters. Crosstabs and methodology are available here.