Three out of five voters who supported Joe Biden in the 2020 election now believe he is too old to keep the reins in 2024, according to a new poll.
Current President Biden, 81, has struggled to fend off concerns over his age ahead of November's election, when he will likely face off against Republican frontrunner Donald Trump for a second time.
Former President Trump, 77, will mark his 78th birthday ahead of voters heading to the polls later this year. Biden turns 82 just weeks after the election, and has already become the oldest-serving U.S. president.
Some 61 percent of Biden voters in 2020 said the president is "just too old" to be an effective leader, polling by Siena College for The New York Times found. Among all registered voters polled, nearly three quarters, or 73 percent, responded that Biden was too old to be effective in his post.
In contrast, 14 percent of those who voted for Trump in 2020 said they thought the Republican was too old to be an effective president from 2024.
Among all registered voters polled, 42 percent said Trump, who has strengthened his path to the Republican presidential candidate nomination with a run of recent wins, was too old to do the job again.
Newsweek has reached out to the White House for comment via email.
The findings are broadly consistent with recent polling. A poll conducted by ABC News and Ipsos, published in mid-February, found that 86 percent of Americans believed the current president was too old to serve another term in the White House. Another Ipsos poll, published by Reuters just days later, found that 78 percent of respondents, including more than 70 percent of Democrats, was too old to be in office. But 53 percent of those polled deemed Trump too old to be a government official.
Concerns around age and capability were present in Biden and Trump's election showdown in 2020, and will only be more so later this year as the current president looks likely to take on the former Republican winner once more.
Early last month, a report released by Special Counsel Robert Hur, a former Trump appointee, described Biden as an "elderly man with a poor memory."
The current president's memory has "significant limitations" and had "appeared hazy," the report alleged.
"My memory is fine," Biden then told the media.
Update 3/3/24, 11:45 a.m. ET: This article was updated with additional information.
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Ellie Cook is a Newsweek security and defense reporter based in London, U.K. Her work focuses largely on the Russia-Ukraine ... Read more
