Presidential Age Debate: Trump and Biden Too Old for Another Term, Poll Reveals

There was also a partisan split on each party’s perception of Biden and Trump’s age. Roughly 7 in 10 Democrats and independents each said both candidates were too old, while 62% of Republicans in the poll said only Biden.

Voters having fewer concerns about Trump is consistent with past polling on the age of the two candidates despite the former president also making frequent speaking errors and mixing up dates, names and places in his speeches.

Trump has sometimes struggled to recall names and dates in recent months, most notably confusing former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley, his only remaining competition in the GOP presidential primary, for former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., while talking about the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Despite the frequent errors, voters do not question Trump’s age and mental fitness to the same level.

“Part of it is just how each of them portrays themselves. Biden tries to portray himself as energetic and vigorous, but it just doesn’t play as well because it’s just too obvious to too many people that he isn’t, whereas Trump — everybody’s beating up on him anyway, so his age is just one more thing. The lead when it comes to Trump is not that he’s old, the lead when it comes to Trump is ‘he shoots from the hip, he’s dangerous, he’s an existential threat,’” said Tobe Berokvitz, a former political media consultant and associate professor of advertising emeritus at Boston University.

Trump’s appearances of the weekend brought some evidence of the other concerns surrounding his candidacy being prioritized over his advanced age, with a pair of statements that drew stiff blowback. One was questioning the absence of Haley’s husband, who is deployed overseas with the South Carolina Army National Guard, which received blowback from both sides of the aisle.

Trump also sparked international condemnation after he said the U.S. shouldn’t help defend a NATO ally if it came under attack from Moscow if they didn’t meet a defense spending target of at least 2% of the country’s gross domestic product. European leaders and U.S. lawmakers from both parties expressed issues with Trump’s stance.

The steady flow of controversies and statements sparking outcries has been a constant theme with Trump’s time in the political spotlight that many voters have taken issue with and help contribute to his poor favorability ratings in public opinion surveys. But it also could contribute to his age being less of a problem to Americans deciding who they will vote for in November.

“Trump is out there all the time, so when Trump makes a mistake, he’s going to be talking an hour later or the next day and it sort of goes into the background as opposed to Biden’s, which hang out there like laundry on a line,” Berkoviitz said.

Ahtra Elnashar contributed to this report.