President Joe Biden is hemorrhaging support among older Americans in the latest Yahoo! News-YouGov poll taken June 28 to July 1 after his disastrous debate with former President Donald Trump on June 27, in what must be a worrying sign for the White House hoping to secure four more years, after which Biden will be 86.
In the most recent poll, voters 65 and over prefer Trump over Biden 54 percent to 38 percent, compared to 52 to 41 percent taken June 3 to June 6, moving from an 11-point to a 16-point lead.
These are the voters who would be most sensitive to questions of age, and when they say the June 27 debate, they did not like what they saw.
Among 45-to-64-year-olds, Trump leads 49 percent to 40 percent, compared to 47 percent to 43 percent in earlier June. It was a 4-point lead, and now it’s a 9-point lead.
These are voters in their mid to late forties who are seeing their parents age, and share similar worries. They’re not liking what they’re seeing, either.
Critically, this is support directly transferring from Biden to Trump, something that will be difficult to discern among partisan Democrats or Republicans, but becomes quite evident when independents are examined.
In earlier June, Biden was leading independents slightly with 41 percent compared to Trump’s 38 percent. Now, the race has flipped, with Trump leading 46 percent to 29 percent. Trump went from trailing independents by 3 points to leading them by 17 points — in the flash of an eye.
The question obviously is Biden’s age, and whatever medical condition he might currently be dealing with, with 65 percent of those polled saying Biden is too old to continue being president.
That includes 40 percent of Democrats, 74 percent of independents and unsurprisingly 87 percent of Republicans who say Biden is too old. Earlier in the month, Yahoo! News-YouGov didn’t even ask that question, but the results are very interesting and reveal deep conflicts among Democrats over Biden’s age, with 39 percent saying he is not too old.
This poses a difficult if not insurmountable challenges for the Biden-Harris administration, with increasing calls for Biden to be replaced by Vice President Kamala Harris, either via Biden’s resignation, invoking the 25th Amendment, Biden opting out of the race or an August convention coup.
If Biden is replaced, they risk alienating his base who thought he was just fine to continue serving, and if they stick with him, they risk losing even more support to Trump and third-party candidates including Robert Kennedy, Jr.
It also injects Biden’s age and competence into questions facing the country, including the economy, with unemployment rising, inflation still outpacing incomes, and other issues including coordinating the NATO alliance while the U.S. appears on the brink of war with Russia after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, rising crime, and millions of illegal immigrants crossing the U.S. southern border every year seemingly unabated.
Failure on the issues now translates directly to Biden’s failure as president, with a ready, easy-to-understand explanation of why he might no longer be qualified to serve.
Adding to the theater of the absurd is Biden’s understandable insistence that he is still prepared to lead the country, which in the face of the full court press seeking to supplant Biden, will be difficult to sell to the American people who would like to see him go right now, or else certainly in November.
The reasons may yet be that despite his apparent enfeeblement, and as hard as it is to believe, Biden still stands the best chance of Democrats holding onto the White House, compared to the alternatives including Harris. In other words, Biden might be choosing what is best for his party over what is best for the country.
For certain, if the question truly is Biden’s health and being unable to soundly make decisions, he ought to resign, and if he refuses, Harris should certainly invoke the 25th Amendment, but if she is looking at polls and believes she cannot defeat Trump, and that stays her hand, then Democrats might be stuck with Biden — for better or for worse.
Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government Foundation.
