Elderly Americans are turning against President Donald Trump, according to polls, threatening his reelection.
Trump won the 2016 presidential election on the strength of his support among voters aged 65 and older.
- The Pew Research Center has estimated seniors voted for him over Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton by a 9-point margin.
The numbers: The latest polls, though, show the demographic, which accounted for one-fourth of the electorate in 2016, favoring Joe Biden at rates nearly unheard of for a Democrat.
- A CNN poll released on Tuesday found Biden ahead of Trump by 21 points among seniors, 62% to 35%.
- An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll on Sunday showed an even bigger gap: 27 points.
- Dave Wasserman of The Cook Political Report in a tweet on Tuesday called it “the ‘gray revolt’ against Trump.”
The same trend has shown up in state polling, including in the key battlegrounds of Florida and Pennsylvania.
Biden has long polled well with seniors: A CNN poll a year ago had them preferring Biden by 11 points.
- But the coronavirus pandemic appears to have worsened the president’s standing.
The reaction: If the polls are right, Trump has seen a 30-point swing in support away from him during his presidency, and his odds of winning in November are long.
- National Journal’s Josh Kraushaar tweeted on Tuesday: “That’s going to be the story of this election: Pivotal Trump voting bloc in 2016 becoming part of the Biden base.”
- A former senior White House official told Axios’ Jonathan Swan that some members of the administration told Trump early on to take the pandemic seriously.
- “Who [cares] what anyone else thinks?” the anonymous source recalled warning. “If you can’t win seniors, you can’t win.”
The history: However, Trump has repeatedly dismissed the “fake polls” — noting that he became president in defiance of the prognosticators.
- Around this time in 2016, a Washington Post/ABC poll showed Clinton leading Trump by 8 points, and an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll gave the Democrat a 2 point advantage.
