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Fifty-nine percent of Americans think Biden and Trump too old for another term

e; I wrote a better headline than the ABC editors decided to and excerpted a bit more

According to the poll, conducted using Ipsos' Knowledge Panel, 86% of Americans think Biden, 81, is too old to serve another term as president. That figure includes 59% of Americans who think both he and former President Donald Trump, the Republican front-runner, are too old and 27% who think only Biden is too old.

Sixty-two percent of Americans think Trump, who is 77, is too old to serve as president. There is a large difference in how partisans view their respective nominees -- 73% of Democrats think Biden is too old to serve but only 35% of Republicans think Trump is too old to serve. Ninety-one percent of independents think Biden is too old to serve, and 71% say the same about Trump.

Concerns about both candidates' ages have increased since September when an ABC News/Washington Post poll found that 74% of Americans thought Biden -- the oldest commander in chief in U.S. history -- was too old to serve another term as president, and 49% said the same about Trump.

Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20240214133801/https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/poll-americans-on-biden-age/story?id=107126589

Part that drew my eye,

The poll also comes days after the Senate failed to advance a bipartisan foreign aid bill with major new border provisions.

Americans find there is blame to go around on Congress' failure to pass legislation intended to decrease the number of illegal crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border -- with about the same number blaming the Republicans in Congress (53%), the Democrats (51%) and Biden (49%). Fewer, 39%, blame Trump.

More Americans trust that Trump would do a better job of handling immigration and the situation at the border than Biden -- 44%-26% -- according to the poll.

So that bipartisan border bill stunt was terrible policy, and it doesn't seem to have done anything for the Democratic party politically

Can we please stop trying to compromise with fascists now?

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  • Age is more than a number. Some people are very sharp at 80. Some are rapidly deteriorating at 60.

    This is the point I wish everyone would remember when they're discussing this issue. It's not the age, but the 'wear and tear' that matters.

    Some people age more gracefully than others, and we truly do want to have our elders wisdom, especially during trying times.

    Having said all that, my personal opinion on all of this is that Biden seems to have cognitively/physically worn down past the level required for the decision-making/stresses of the office of the Presidency.

    If he wants to have a third party doctor give him a cognizant test, and he passes it, and he publicly notifies all of us voters of that, then I would be up for voting for him again.

    But judging based on the very little I'm allowed to see, as a voter, based on how few public news conferences that he does, and having seen him faltering in some of those, it truly does seem like it's time for him to move on.

    Also IMO, Trump is a semen stain on the soul of America, and he quite literally is a test to see if America is America, or not. If we reaffirm our leader as someone who, as a 'wolf in sheeps clothing', is a very immoral and unethical grifter, then we are lost. All of us.

    Not that it's going to happen, but both parties should be putting someone else up as their candidates for the presidency of the United States of America in 2024.

    • Having said all that, my personal opinion on all of this is that Biden seems to have cognitively/physically worn down past the level required for the decision-making/stresses of the office of the Presidency

      If JFK and Reagan could do it with all their health problems I think Biden will be fine. It's not ideal, but the staffers of the White House and Pentagon can hold things together for a while if needbe, and I will take that over a Republican administration any day.

    • It's a fact that the chance of an incumbent has a higher chance of winning a reelection. So, I understand why we are going with Biden. Even Biden said he was only going to run once. But this isn't just some random election. This will likely determine if America is going to exist past 2024

    • If he wants to have a third party doctor give him a cognizant test, and he passes it, and he publicly notifies all of us voters of that, then I would be up for voting for him again.

      Except for the fact that it's generally military physicians who treat the President, he gets a cognitive test every year as part of his physical. Trump got one every year too, and was as proud as a toddler with a gold star sticker when he "passed" it. The white house releases the results of the President's annual exam and, presuming you do not distrust the doctor, it is what it is.

      Nobody is going to be administering some mental agility test on the President any more than they'll be asking him to complete and pass the ACFT (Army Combat Fitness Test).

      (IMO he should have stepped aside last year and let Kamala Harris take over as President to give her a chance to make her own case for re-election, making way for the next generation to lead.)

      • Kamala Harris probably has less chances than Hilary unfortunately. Remember whoever the Dems choose have to beat Trump. And the election cycle is sort of repeating what happened in 2016.

        Nobody thought Trump had any chances. At the start of this election cycle DeSantis was beating Trump in polls. People thought Trump was done for. Then what happens? Trump is constantly on the news, just like in 2016. Then he dominates the GOP primary, just like in 2016.

        The only candidate that has any chance to beat Trump is another populist candidate. Someone like Bernie but more aggressive and controversial.

        Biden only won because he was the VP for Obama who was a popular president (relative to modern presidents). He was a great public speaker and was the last real "presidential" president we've had. A coherent and articulate speaker.

        Kamala Harris simply would not inherit any meaningful public opinion from Biden. It would be the opposite - she would have to start from a worse position.

        Biden is less popular than Trump. Both current popularity and if we go back to Trump'a popularity at the same time during his presidency. If the election was held today, Trump would win with a strong margin - according to the polls.

        • according to the polls.

          Yeah, about those - I've been wondering who and how they're polling. Nobody I know under 50 even has a real landline, and most of them don't pick up calls on their cell unless it comes up as someone in their contacts. Same with SMS or any messaging. Web ads? Facebook ads (LOL)? It sure as hell isn't email, either. It's probably nearly impossible to get any realistic data in person since most people avoid in-person marketing even harder than online. The only people I know who do answer the telephone are old people - like over 55 or 60, and that's a pretty skewed demographic.

          • https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/

            there's a website that catalogues and compiles polls from various different sources. each poll asks something like 1500~ people. they do both telephone and online polling, depending on the polling organization. if you click on the poll, you can find out more about the organization and they often publish exact methods and data so you can look for yourself how they gathered the data

            now, you're right that the sample size is going to be different than the population. however, there is a science and math to this stuff where you can use formulas in order to account for that. let me give a simple example

            let's say you live in Townsville with a population of 60 people. 20 of those people are male and 40 are female. you want to find out whether everyone likes vanilla or chocolate ice cream, so you go to the bowling alley. at the bowling alley, there are 10 men and 10 women. so you survey everyone but you realize

            the sample size demographics are different than the actual population demographics. in the population, females outnumber males 2 to 1 whereas in the sample population it's 1:1. so you need to weigh your votes accordingly

            you can either do one of two things - you can count every vote from a woman twice. or you can count every vote for a men at a ratio of 50%. that way you are representing the population demographics more accurately

            polling agencies do this but with a myriad of different demographic properties. age, sex, gender, income, ethnicity, etc, in order to try to get a more accurate number. you will never be able to exactly represent a population with a small sample size, but you can get pretty damn close within a margin of error.

            tldr: polls are not perfect but they absolutely can help predict public sentiment because of some statistical axioms (Law of Large Numbers, Central Limit Theorem, Random Sampling)

            • I agree that there are statistical methods to everything, and they are quite powerful. My concern is that population sample is limited and, in many ways self-selecting, due to the ability of pollsters to access a representative cross section of the (population/voting population). I noted the impossibility of getting a representative sample using telephone polling. Online would be just as fraught - huge demographics literally don't participate in those communication methods, by choice. Granted, actual voting is similarly inaccurate, and can be wildly so, do to voluntary non-participation; but the cross product of phone/internet poll users and voters, I would suspect, is pretty far from 1.0.

299 comments