Two-thirds of Democratic and Democratic-leaning independents would prefer President Joe Biden step away so that another candidate could assume the party mantle ahead of the 2024 presidential election, a new poll released Thursday morning revealed.
Nearly half (49 percent) of the 391 individuals sampled by CNN were alarmed by Biden’s age and associated problems. The other contributing causes for anxiety among Democratic-sympathetic voters included Biden’s “mental competence/sharpness/senility,” “ability to handle the job/effectiveness,” and “health,” with each garnering 7 percent of respondent support as their “biggest concern.”
The findings coincide with a similar study commissioned by the Associated Press (AP) and NORC Center for Public Affairs Research published last Monday, which found Biden suffering from widespread perceptions of being too old to properly fulfill the duties of public office, especially compared with Donald Trump.
Over three-quarters (77 percent) of more than 1,000 American adults surveyed found Biden “too old to effectively serve another 4-year term as president.” Just over half (51 percent) felt the same about the former president. The gap was particularly glaring among Republican voters, 90 percent of whom view Biden’s lack of vitality as disqualifying.
“Just watching and listening to Biden, it’s pretty self-evident he is not what he was,” one respondent told AP. Meanwhile, the individual felt Trump “is a lot sharper, but at the end of his term, who knows?”
The sentiment was widespread. “I see all the symptoms my grandpa had,” a thirtysomething man told the outlet. “You can’t be ruling a country” in that shape.
“Biden just seems to be very compromised by age-related conditions,” Eric Dezenhall, a former staffer in the Reagan administration who now works as a corporate scandal consultant, told AP. “Even people who like him see him as being frail and not altogether ‘there.'”
“Whatever Trump’s negatives are, I don’t think most people see them as being related to being disabled in an age-related way,” Dezenhall added. “In fact, the more you throw at him, the more he seems like a ranting toddler. Disturbing, sure, but elderly? Not necessarily. Trump has been ranting this way for almost eight decades, and it always drives him forward.”