Biden And Age

Age and the White House

With President Joe Biden nearing the end of his first Presidential term and running for re-election this November, much of the focus of both his rival and the press has focused on concerns that he is too old to be in office. While former President (and presumptive Republican nominee) Donald Trump is in his late 70s, the narrative has stuck that Biden’s age is something to be discussed.

Biden will be turning 82 this November, making him the oldest sitting President in US history. In June, Trump will turn 78. This election will have the two oldest candidates running since….2020, when they were also the oldest candidates to run against each other. Within the context of this year’s election, however, the bigger question is: how is Biden’s age perceived related to his performance on policy, and are American voters truly concerned?

Overall, the answer certainly points to his age being a concern. However, these numbers vary wildly by partisanship. Indeed, on average, voters in our national panel allocate 69 out of 100 points towards being concerned about Biden’s age, whereas they allocate just 27 points towards not being concerned. The roughly 3:1 ratio between being concerned vs. not is definitely a challenge for the sitting President, although the overall numbers are being aided by near-universal views among those who are strong backers of Trump (92% concerned vs. 8% not) and those who are strongly committed to a third party candidate (79% vs. 19%).

It feels worth noting that most of the third party and Independent candidates who are running this year – Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Cornel West, and Jill Stein, to name a few – are all 70 or older. So, regardless of the conversation surrounding Biden’s age, all options on the ballot this year are past the age for collecting Medicare.

While the President’s age is more of an issue for Trump and third party voters, strong Biden supporters allocate a majority to not being concerned (55 points out of 100); however, they are much more nuanced in their views compared to the other two cohorts as they are still more concerned than the average voter (38 points vs. 27).

Diving into the numbers behind the averages, the distribution of opinion (which highlights the percentage of voters who allocated their 100 points a certain way on the 0-100 scale) for being concerned unsurprisingly reiterates that an overwhelming majority of strong Trump voters and strong third party voters are concerned about Biden’s age, with 92% and 73% being more than 80% concerned, respectively. In contrast, less than 1 in 5 strong Biden voters (16%) are more than 80% concerned and 2 in 5 (39%) rate their concern below 20, meaning another 45% fall somewhere in the middle.

When it comes to the distribution of opinion for not being concerned, we find a nearly identical distribution among strong Trump voters, simply flipped. Strong third party voters follow the same pattern, albeit with lower percentages in the 0-19-point range, indicating there is more nuance in their opinion compared to strong Trump voters.

Again, strong Biden voters have a wider range of views when it comes to allocating their lack of concern, but still have the highest percentage of voters who are absolutely not concerned (35% allocating 80 or more points to this answer option). A quarter (24%) of strong Biden supporters indicate a high level of not having concerns over his age. This is 8 points higher than the indication of being very concerned. This difference tends to indicate opinions that are more fluid compared to Trump supporters who are more adamant in their views on this issue.

How Americans Describe Joe Biden

From February to April of this year, Trendency also asked Americans to describe Joe Biden (as well as Donald Trump) in a few words. Among the roughly 1,000 responses, the top word used among those who voted for Biden in 2020 was “old,” with 191 cases. However, among his 2020 supporters, this was the only word in the top 10 with negative connotations – the remaining popular words were positive in nature, including words like, “good,” “honest,” and “caring.”

Among 2020 Trump Voters, “old” was also the most commonly used word and was also used more often, with 214 occurrences. Based on the responses collected, it feels safe to say that most Trump voters are not fans of the current President, with all of the top 10 words decidedly negative in nature even if they were not related to his age, such as, “liar,” “weak,” and incompetent.”

There were relatively few third party voters who answered these questions (roughly 250), but the words used were much closer to those of Trump voters. The word “old” was again the most common word used, but they also frequently utilized age-related terms such as “senile” and “dementia.” One of the top five most used terms was positive - “good” - and the remaining word, “needs” tended to be followed by some version of wanting to remove him from office.

How Americans Describe Donald Trump

Among the roughly 1,000 responses, the top word used to describe Trump among those who voted for Biden in 2020 was “liar,” with 100 cases. Other negative words used by these voters include “racist,” “criminal,” and “narcissistic.” While “good” seems like a weird term to be included with this list, it comes with a caveat – it was usually used in larger descriptions, most often “no good.” However, despite the two being so close in age, no words associated with Trump’s age made the top ten.

The top word used to describe Trump by his own supporters from 2020 was “great,” with 88 cases. This was followed by the use of the word “good,” with 87 cases. Apart from the use of the word “arrogant” with 33 cases, most of the remaining words used to describe Trump have positive or neutral connotations, for example “strong,” “smart,” and “business.” Just two voters from our April data mentioned his age, with one saying he is “almost as old as Joe.”

Although third party voters aligned more with Trump voters when describing Biden, they aligned more with Biden voters when describing Trump, albeit with less responses overall. The word “liar” was again the most common word with 9 cases and the word “narcissist” was also used again, along with a NSFW term that proved quite a colorful addition to our open-ended responses.

In Conclusion

Overall, the distribution of the views on Biden’s age illustrate that it may be less of an issue than is often reported. Given America’s worsening political divisions, what Trump voters think of Biden (and vice versa) is relatively meaningless as the chances of these voters crossing party lines to vote for the other candidate are slim to none.

Every single candidate running for President this year is over the age of 70, so there isn’t much voters can do in terms of running away from the question of an official’s age in office. It is certainly clear from the data that the narrative around Biden’s age specifically has taken root, and it is hard to imagine that this will change. Attempts by the Biden campaign and his supporters to point out the age similarities between the President and former President Trump are not showing much, if any, traction in the data. Only time will tell if this will be a true differentiating factor between them at the polls.