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Roula Khalaf, editor of the FT, selects her favorite stories in this weekly newsletter.
The writer is a contributing columnist, based in Chicago
Most U.S. voters are concerned about the age of their next leader, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the issue will determine how they vote in November’s presidential election.
Poll after poll shows that high percentages of American voters fear that President Joe Biden, and to a lesser extent former President Donald Trump, are not mentally or physically up to another term in the White House. A recent NBC poll found that more than three-quarters of respondents had major or moderate concerns that Biden would not have “the mental and physical health necessary” to serve again. A recent swing state poll found that 82% of voters surveyed thought Biden or both candidates were too old, while 47% said the same about Trump or both candidates.
Biden, 81, and Trump, 77, are the oldest candidates ever to run for president of the United States – and no one is letting them forget it. A recently released report by U.S. Department of Justice Special Counsel Robert Hur called Biden an “elderly, well-intentioned man with a poor memory,” prompting Democrats to retaliate with a physical exam that found him “fit for duty.” ” – even if that didn’t work. do not include a cognitive test.
Some polls show Biden’s support lagging behind Trump’s, apparently in part because voters care more about his age than that of his slightly younger Republican rival. But veteran poll watchers take this with a grain of salt.
“It’s like asking if they care about climate change, of course [voters] they will say yes, so if you ask if a politician is too old. . . they will overwhelmingly say yes, but will continue to elect them anyway. Old politicians get reelected all the time,” Alex Conant, a Republican strategist and former communications director for Republican Marco Rubio’s 2016 presidential bid, told me. He thinks Republicans are wrong to think they can defeat Biden on the age issue.
Others point out that concerns about Biden’s mental wobbles are, to some extent, already in the price. Even in 1996, when I first covered him for the FT, I was unimpressed by the then senator’s acuity. Public gaffes have always been his thing; mixing countries and confusing dead world leaders with living ones hardly came out of nowhere.
After Hur’s report criticizing Biden’s memory last month, “experts went nuts on the age question,” says Charles Franklin, poll director at Marquette Law School. But when Marquette surveyed voters around the time the report was released, Franklin says he was “surprised that there was so little movement” in the perceptions of voters his age. “In November [2023]”57% said ‘too old to be president’ described Biden very well and 55% said the same in February,” he said, noting that Biden’s “image is entrenched.”
The latest Marquette poll also found that older voters were less concerned about Biden’s age than younger ones, which could matter in an election year in which more Americans are turning 65 than ever. Older Americans vote at a higher rate than young people, and as Franklin points out: “young people think Biden is older than older people.”
Among registered voters ages 18 to 29, 91% said “too old to be president” described Biden “very or somewhat well,” while the figure was 76% for those over 60. “If you’re 24, someone 81 seems ancient, but if you’re our age, you tend to think ‘he’s just starting,’” says Franklin, who at 69 is my age.
Rick Popely, 75, a classmate in my senior conversational Spanish class at the local community college, speaks for many voters when he says, “I wouldn’t vote against someone because they’re old, and I wouldn’t vote for someone because they’re younger. There have to be better reasons than this.
“For many people, this election is a choice between two bad guys, not between good and evil,” Franklin says. For voters who already don’t like either candidate, “age is just another reason not to vote for him, not the reason not to vote for him,” she says.
Most voters have probably already made up their minds anyway: Biden can confuse Egypt and Mexico, and Trump can confuse rival Nikki Haley and Democrat Nancy Pelosi. But I doubt that will stop either of them from getting elected.