The poll questions are part of a long series of attributes that voters were asked to rate Biden on – the same battery was used multiple times during Donald Trump’s presidency and asked about both candidates last fall, ahead of the 2020 presidential election.
The new poll comes amid persistent questions about whether Biden – who turns 79 on Saturday – will run for re-election in three years and Democrats are increasingly interested in the party’s gerontocracy. Biden says he will run again, but some longtime allies have expressed doubts. Even “Saturday Night Live” recently pissed Biden over whether he was “clear”.
The most in-depth investigation of Biden’s age and verbal mistakes was previously limited to conservative news outlets and social media, said Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster who conducted a poll for Biden.
“You’re running a very aggressive campaign on this, and it’s bleeding a little into the mainstream,” said Lake. “By and large, the people who believe that are Trump supporters anyway, or they have been exposed to the right-wing disinformation machinery.”
To show Lake’s point, the Morning Consult poll in general shows that Trump voters and Republicans in general believe that Biden is neither physically nor mentally fit, and Biden voters believe the opposite. However, independents disagree – with a margin of 23 points – that Biden is now mentally fit.
Prior to last year’s election, independents and voters as a whole believed Biden was physically and mentally fitter than Trump, whose mismanagement of the pandemic harmed his campaign as the Biden camp embraced social distancing and avoided large events for the most part.
But with Trump gone as a foil for the time being, Biden is in the spotlight more than ever, and his overall approval rating began to crumble with the bloody withdrawal from Afghanistan. The devastation of the coronavirus delta variant, the dispute in Congress, and public perception of the economy also contributed to Biden’s problems.
The new Morning Consult survey shows that 44 percent give Biden a positive rating of job approval and 53 percent reject it. Biden’s approval rating has been largely unchanged for the past two weeks – it was 46 percent last week and 45 percent the week before – since the Infrastructure Bill was passed in Congress earlier this month.
A recent Harvard-Harris poll found that 53 percent of voters said they had doubts about Biden’s fitness and 47 percent said they didn’t. When asked if Biden was too old to be president, 58 percent said he was and 42 percent said he was fit enough.
The Morning Consult poll found that voters did not see Biden as a clear communicator with 20 points, found him not energetic with 26 points and not a strong leader with 17 points.
The POLITICO / Morning Consult poll was conducted November 13-15 and polled 1,998 registered voters. The error rate is plus or minus 2 percentage points.
Republican pollster Neil Newhouse said Biden’s difficulty communicating clearly could help keep his approval ratings low.
“When you see Biden, you get the feeling that he’s just missing a punch, that he’s not what he used to be,” Newhouse said. “The voters are taking it.”
Newhouse noted that Biden is losing support among the most loyal democratic segment of voters: black voters. This is shown not only by polls, said Newhouse, but also by a recent focus group of black voters in a southern state who were interviewed to discuss political issues.
Newhouse, who interviewed Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign, said he was surprised by the mild response to Biden when the host asked voters about the president.
“Biden is definitely slow in a lot of things. I’m not sure if it’s his age or if he’s still walking after 30 decades, ”joked one respondent, according to a transcript. As if supporting Biden in 2024, the woman said, “If he’s still alive. I’m just saying yes. “
Morning Consult is a global data intelligence company that delivers real-time insights into what people are thinking by interviewing tens of thousands around the world every day.
Further details on the survey and its methodology can be found in these two documents: Toplines | Crosstabs
