Why do Americans consider Biden to be too old for president, but not Trump?

Question

A number of polls show that Americans by and large consider Joe Biden to be too old to be president.

For example, an Associated Press poll asked

Do you think each of the following is too old to effectively serve another 4-year term as president, or not?

For Biden, 77% answered yes. But for Trump, only 51% answered yes.

How come this discrepancy given that Trump is only 3 years younger than Biden? I don't think the discrepancy can solely be a party political thing, because if Republicans considered Biden too old and Democrats considered Trump too old, we would expect to see roughly similar figures for both.

Answer 1

I too find this as puzzling (and irrational). Here are some reasons I can think of:

• Left-digit bias

Just like buyers (incorrectly) perceive $10 to be much more expensive than $9.99, voters may (incorrectly) perceive an 81-year-old to be much older than a 77-year-old.

• Hair dye

Biden doesn't bother dyeing his white hair. Trump does (blonde/orange).

• Biden's gaffes and stuttering

Doctors/medical scientists say it would be a sign of cognitive decline if one's rate of gaffes and stuttering has increased of late, which is not the case for Biden. (Biden's problem with gaffes and stuttering is a lifelong one.)

But this is a subtle point that most voters probably don't care about. When they do see Biden occasionally gaffeing and stuttering, they are quick to regard this as a sign of old age.

• Trump's brash personality

This probably reminds most voters of a dumb teenager.

In contrast, Biden's more measured style reminds most voters of the octogenarian statesman that he is.

• Trump is fatter

Again, this is irrational (being fatter should make Trump's health a greater concern).

But I think to most voters, being fatter makes Trump look younger. (Survivorship bias means that there are few old fat persons or equivalently, fat persons are disproportionately young.)

Biden, being skinnier, looks more like a typical old man.

• Trump's orange skin color

Whether this is natural (as he'd probably claim) or not (as many have claimed), this makes him look younger. In contrast, Biden doesn't seem to bother much with make-up or other enhancements.

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Olshansky, Barnes, and Willcox (The Hill, 2024-01-07):

Today his [Biden] chances of surviving through a second term in office are close to 75 percent (about 10 percent better survival than for an average man his age). Similar, although slightly less favorable survival prospects are present for Trump. ...

There is no clinical evidence for cognitive decline in President Biden — despite armchair gerontologists declaring otherwise. ...

It is also common to mistake Biden’s lifelong speech impediment for cognitive decline, his cough for an inability to speak clearly, his changed gate [sic] for a man in significant decline, an occasional misstatement as a sign of mental decay, etc. ...

President Biden exhibits characteristics consistent with superager status. The evidence so far — evaluated by experts in medicine and aging science and uninfluenced by politics and rapid judgments based on limited information — is that President Biden’s chronological age should not be an impediment to running for a second term in office.

Answer 2

I am French and we (in general) loosely follow US politics because, well, this is the US. I do not have any special affinities for the US but vastly prefer Democrats to Republicans. This is also the average situation within the group of people I discuss these topics^*.

With this said, every time we see Joe Biden on TV, it looks to us as if he is about to die in the next minute. We do not see him often, and in maybe 50% of the cases this is because he did something (tripped, forgot, ...). The other 50% are short clips of him saying something important.

Donald Trump, on the other hand, is shown when he is doing something weird. These are words, gestures, whatever. In none of these cases he looks weak but rather overexcited.

These two limited, non-objective pictures we get essentially show a weak, slow Biden and a dynamic Trump. The actual age does not matter then.

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^* The main reason for this partisan view, I believe, is that the US "left" is close to our "right", and the Republicans are "far, far right" (further right than our far right). This is not really related to a specific fondness for Democrats' politics.

Answer 3

I suspect this is pure partisan bias. Let's make the assumption that a large percentage of the country (regardless of political orientation) thinks that 70+ is a bit old for the presidency. If so, we can expect all Democrats and Republicans to report that they think Biden is too old, but only Democrats and non-Trump Republicans to report that for Trump. Trump (as a matter of his style of personality politics) has developed a deeply loyal core of supporters who think that Trump (more or less) can do no wrong. While these people would certainly accept the age ceiling is true as a general rule, they would not believe the rule applies to Trump, and would not report such on a survey.

Biden runs a different kind of campaign — more party and issue-centric than personality-centric — and consequently has never developed an ultra-loyal base which would studiously ignore his potential weaknesses. That difference would easily account for the discrepancy seen.

Answer 4

I think that the question Why do Americans consider Biden to be too old for president, but not Trump? fails to look at the polling data correctly.

It's not true that "Americans" consider Biden too old for president, but not Trump.

The poll results are entirely a function of how Republicans answered this question. The Democrats seem to have the same opinion of Biden and Trump regarding age.

Republican voters and the Republican Party have placed their bets on Trump in spite of an ever-increasing pile of evidence that he is (to put it mildly) a bad choice for president. In order to do this, a huge amount of cognitive dissonance is required.

It's this kind of dissonance that allows the Republican poll respondents to believe that Biden is too old but Trump is not.

RussellMcMahon's answer adds some detail to this answer

Answer 5

Perhaps what affects the perception of age is not only the nominal or/and biological age, but also the time spent in Washington: Biden first became a senator in 1973, at the height of the Cold War, while the USSR was still run by Leonid Brezhnev, internet and personal computers were only emerging on the market, telephones were still landlines. Americans distinctly associate their first political experiences with Reagan era, George H.W. Bush, Clinton, George W. Bush, Obama, and finally Trump - these are many "political generations". One might mention Biden when speaking about the political views of one's parents or even grandparents. On the other hand, Trump emerged on the scene only recently, associated mostly with his somewhat youthful Apprentice show - his "political age" is just a generation, he has less "luggage" (if we don't count his legal problems), less association with the events regarded as distant past.

Answer 6

• Trump puts effort into presenting as younger than he is.

• Right wing media are consistently attacking Biden on his age.

• Biden is older than Trump by one term.

• Biden already is the oldest serving US president.

• Biden is in his 80s, Trump is not.

The last 3 prevent left leaning media and Democrats from effectively using the age attack against Trump. If Trump was running against someone in their 50s or 60s, age would absolutely be a major issue for Trump.

Answer 7

I'm a NZer, an engineer and familiar with statistics.
I "have no dog in the race".

This result is clearly a direct result of Republican bias.
"Biden is too old" has been established as a mantra and it has become the standard Republican response. This conclusion is the same as stated by Dancrumb, but I've added some figures.

Examination of results like this is crucially important if we are not to be swayed in our impressions by statistics which do not reflect what they might appear to show.

• If we take the overall figures they appears to show that there is a very clear difference in voter impressions re the age-suitability of the two candidates,

• If we look instead at the party aligned results we see that the poll actually reflects a major difference between the way that Democrats & Republicans, on average "do politics" in this case.

Consider:

Democrats:

• 71% consider that Trump is too old and 69% consider that Biden is too old.

This is a small bias against the younger candidate. This could be ascribed to the degree of bias that one might reasonably expect in a demographic subset that favours its own candidate.

Republicans:

• 28% consider that Trump is too old and 89% consider that Biden is too old.

This is an immense bias in favour of the younger candidate - who happens to be "their" candidate. A factor of over 3 to 1 in favour of Trump.

The overall results are simply the expected weighted mean of the two groups.

Biden -

(69% + 89%)/2 = 79%. Actual overall = 77%. This suggests that there were slightly more Republicans than Democrats in the poll.

Trump -

(71% + 28%) /2 = 49.5%. Actual overall = 51% This suggests slightly more Democrats than Republicans were polled.

The slight variation of the actual result from the strict average suggests there were some other secondary factors in play, but nothing too significant.

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If I was to draw any conclusion about the results, which is far too dangerous and uncertain to do, I might conclude either that.

• Democrats are dreaming about their candidate's abilities and Republicans are realistic and can see the clear truth. or
• Republicans are desperately seeking to perceive their candidates age as of little importance as they wish him to be clearly preferred for the role.

As I said above these, or probably most other, conclusions are far to dangerous and uncertain to hazard, so I will not do so. :-)

Answer 8

The people who vote Republican are older, perhaps by 5-12 years.

https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/?attachment_id=20080828

Only 3% of Americans say that it's best to have a president in his 70's.

https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/SR_2023.07.06_president-age_1.png?w=620

Botox and weight and other cosmetic changes help Trumps image.

Beyond the age of 70, humans suffer from a rapid deterioration of motor control, and phonological troubles, which has a negative impact on their professional life. Pre-existing motor speech impediments can worsen faster, including dysarthria and apraxia, which, unfortunately for Joe Biden will continue to decline as he reaches his 80's. They make for difficult communication. He was indeed a lot more forceful with is speech ability previously and at his first presidential campaign. Concerning his mental abilities he is fairly sharp for a 77 year old, he thinks of what he says.

Actually, there is scientific evidence to support age-related cognitive decline across the board after the age of 60, especially in the ability to deal with numbers and words:

(The graph on the left is compared to other ages) https://media.springernature.com/full/springer-static/image/art%3A10.1186%2F1743-0003-5-26/MediaObjects/12984_2008_Article_150_Fig1_HTML.jpg ref

That is perhaps why 3% of voters want a president in his 70's, and 70% of voters prefer to have a president younger than 60.

Answer 9

Look at the breakdown. 70% of Democrats (+/- 1%) think that both Biden and Trump are old enough that it is a problem. There isn't much of a difference at all among Democrats. You'd actually expect Democrats to have a bias towards their candidate here, despite Biden being older, but none is apparent.

Meanwhile, among Republicans, 89% think Biden is too old, and 22% think Trump is too old.

To understand this, we have to look at the level of information that Republican party members express from their other preferences. To wit, 69% of Republicans support an insurrectionist¹ and rapist² as their party leader; they either deny reality, or don't care about pretty horrible things for a president to have done. I wouldn't expect reality-aligned answers from either group; the first, because they are disconnected from it, the second, because if you the kind of person who is good with rape and insurrection, why would you tell the truth to a pollster? Instead, you are going to lie to advance your political position, and admitting any flaw in your preferred rapist and insurrectionist is something you aren't going to do for no good reason.

That leaves the 31% of Republicans who prefer a different leader; none of them have left the party, despite it being quite effectively taken over by an insurrectionist and rapist. Now, some of these Republicans think Trump doesn't go far enough, others prefer a different candidate but would take Trump, most would prefer a known insurrectionist and rapist over anyone from a different party.

That a whole 22% of these members are willing to admit any flaw in their de-facto leader is surprisingly high. Their news sources -- (Australian far-right-wing owned) Fox News (and other even more right-wing publications) -- will be repeatedly attacking Biden's age.

In short, the difference can be explained by the observed low-information and low-morals status of voters in the Republican party.

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¹ https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/dec/28/maine-disqualifies-trump-presidential-primary-ballot-insurrection https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-colorado-supreme-court/

² https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/07/19/trump-carroll-judge-rape/

Answer 10

Without effective government, powerful and wealthy non-Federal entities or States will be able to wield more power.

The GOP represents these other interests and Trump's successes were accomplished by tearing down Federal government entities to regulate them.

The Democrats oppose these interests and they can only succeed by keeping the government up, strong, and effective.

Trump can go a bit senile because his job is to prevent the government from working effectively.

Senility is harmful to Biden because it prevents the government from working effectively.