According to a DailyMail.com poll, half of all Democrats say Joe Biden is too old to be president
A new poll for DailyMail.com exposes the challenge President Joe Biden faces as he runs for re-election: Nearly half of Democrats think he’s too old for the job, and 52 of all voters think they’re worse off since he became president.
Republicans have used both as lines of attack in their campaigns to fire Biden.
The president has always been prone to blunders, but now every botched remark is being used as evidence that the 80-year-old is no longer fit for office.
And after leading gas price spikes and a year of rampant inflation, the Republicans think they can beat him on the wallet front.
A new poll from DailyMail.com/JL Partners shows how vulnerable Biden is to both issues.
Some 49 percent of Democrats admit that Joe Biden is too old to be president. Only 28 percent think they are exactly the right age
President Joe Biden is already America’s oldest-ever president. He would be 86 at the end of a second term, which nearly three-quarters of American voters say is too old
It found that 71 percent of likely voters in a general election think he’s too old to be president β let alone at the end of a second term, when he’d be 86.
The numbers are distorted by political preference, but even 49 percent of Democrats agree.
Only 28 percent of them think he is ‘about the right age’.
Biden has tried to laugh off worries that he no longer has the energy or sharpness for the job, but those efforts have sometimes backfired.
On Friday, he tried it out in front of a friendly crowd at a gun control rally in Connecticut.
βMany of you are tired. You are tired. No, I get it. Try to be 110 and do it again,β he said with a laugh.
But at the end of the speech, he left everyone confused when his last words were, “God save the Queen.”
At 80 years old, Biden is already the oldest president in the country. Every day he extends the record.
Age is not Biden’s only electoral liability. More than half of voters say they are worse off since he came to power β about 43 percent say they are a lot
When 1,000 voters were asked about one word they associate with Biden, the answer was ‘old’
He’s generally in good health, and experts say he may even be a “superager,” one of the few people whose cognitive functioning is decades younger than his body.
That’s lost with most voters, said JL Partners co-founder James Johnson, who led the poll.
“Few things unite American voters, but one: the belief that Biden is too old to be president,” he said.
Decisive margins across all age groups, ethnic groups and political parties agree with the sentiment.
And worryingly for the current president, those most likely to say they are worse off under Biden’s policies include groups disproportionately impacted in elections: independent voters and 45-64-year-olds.
“While he managed to keep his age from becoming a critical issue in 2020, it looks set to be the defining hesitation in voters’ minds next year.”
If Donald Trump is the Republican nominee, it would mean voters in next year’s presidential election have to choose between an 81-year-old and a 78-year-old
For his part, Biden has said questions about his age are perfectly “legitimate.”
Republican frontrunner Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that Biden suffers from dementia, but has avoided attacking him directly on age β perhaps because he turned 77 last week.
Other 2024 candidates have happily taken up the issue.
Former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, 51, has called for competency testing for candidates over age 75.
And she has used Biden’s choice of running mate against him.
“He announced he’s running again in 2024, and I think we can all be very clear and basically say that if you’re voting for Joe Biden, you’re really counting on a President Harris, because the idea that he would make it to 86 years old is not something I think is likely,” she said in an interview on Fox News.
Ron DeSantis’ campaign has also identified age and economics as decisive facts in the election, rather than Florida’s hardline stance on abortion.
In leaked audio obtained by FloridaPolitics.comsaid Ryan Tyson, campaign pollster. “If you’re a voter in 2024, as we’re probably in a historic recession and you’re choosing between a young candidate — Ron DeSantis — versus an octogenarian, and if you vote on the issue of abortion as one of the top two issues, our data suggest that that person has a very high correlation with typical Democratic voting behavior.’
Overall, some 43 percent of Americans say they’re “a lot worse off” since Biden took office, and another 9 percent call themselves “a little worse off.”
The demographic breakdown shows that the numbers are worst among those in older age groups, among non-college graduates, among men, and among white and Hispanic voters.
These are categories Biden needs to win back voters from the Republicans and from Trump in particular.
The poll was conducted from June 12 to 15 and used landlines, cell phones, text and apps to reach 1,000 likely U.S. general election voters. It has a margin of error of 3.1 percent.