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WASHINGTON — A majority of Americans agree on something about politics: Joe Biden is too old to be an effective president in a second term, a poll finds. Only a few years Biden's junior, Donald Trump raises strikingly less concern about his age, according to the poll.
But they have plenty of other problems with Trump, who at least for now far outdistances his rivals for the Republican nomination despite his multiple criminal indictments.
A new poll from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds much of the public united in sizing up the one trait Biden cannot change.
In the poll, fully 77% of Americans polled said Biden is too old to be effective for four more years. Not only do 89% of Republicans say that, so do 69% of Democrats. That view is held across age groups, not just by young people, though older Democrats specifically are more supportive of his 2024 bid.
In contrast, about half of U.S. adults say Trump is too old for the office. Democrats are far more likely to disqualify Trump by age than are Republicans.
In all about two-thirds of U.S. adults back an age ceiling on candidates for president and Congress and a mandatory retirement age for justices.
Specifically, 67% favor requiring Supreme Court justices to retire by a certain age, 68% support age ceilings for candidates for House and Senate, and 66% support age ceilings for candidates for president.
The survey suggests lots of people across political lines are open to seeing a younger face, a fresher one, or both, capture the public imagination.
Among them is Noah Burden, a 28-year-old communications consultant in Alexandria, Virginia. Despite a clear preference for Biden over Trump, he wishes the top contenders for the presidency were closer to his generation.
"They're too old overall," Burden said. That older generation represents "a sense of values and sense of the country and the world that just isn't accurate anymore. It can be dangerous to have that view."
Similarly, Greg Pack, 62, a past and possibly future Trump voter in Ardmore, Oklahoma, wishes Biden and Trump would both move along.
"Just watching and listening to Biden it's pretty self-evident he is not what he was," said Pack, a registered nurse.
Speaking about Trump and his readiness for the White House, Pack said, "He is a lot sharper but at the end of his term, who knows?" while contemplating January 2029. "I'm just ready for someone younger."
What word comes to American minds about the candidates?
The AP-NORC survey went beyond posing questions and presenting choices. It also had a word association exercise, asking people to offer the first word or phrase that comes to mind at the mention of each man.
The answers underscored how Biden's age is an issue for voters across party lines, even when people aren't prompted to think about that, and how Trump largely escapes that only to draw disdain if not disgust on other fronts.
In those visceral responses, 26% mentioned Biden's age and an additional 15% used words such as "slow" or "confused." One Republican thought of "potato." Among Democrats, Biden's age was mentioned upfront by 28%. They preferred such terms over "president," "leader," "strong" or "capable." One who approves of his performance nevertheless called him "senile."
Only 3% in the survey came up with "confused" as the first descriptor for Trump, and a mere 1% used "old" or the like. Instead, the top words were those like "corrupt" or "crooked" (15%), "bad" and other generally negative terms (11%), words such as "liar" and "dishonest" (8%), along with "good" and other generally positive comments (8%).
Is age relevant?
Older Democrats are less negative than younger ones on Biden's decision to run again. In the poll, only 34% of Democrats under 45 want him running for reelection, compared with 54% of those older. About three-quarters of younger Democrats say they'll at least probably support him if he's the nominee; others did not commit to that.
All of this is dispiriting to S. Jay Olshansky, a public-health professor and aging expert at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He thinks age, when sizing up a presidential candidate, is no more relevant than eye color and the public's focus on it shortchanges the gift of wisdom and experience.
"It's sort of the classic ageism that we've been battling for the last 50 years," he said. "The age of the individual is irrelevant. It's the policies that they bring to the table that are important. And the number of times around the sun just doesn't cut it as an important variable at all."
From observing both men from afar and examining their medical records, Olshansky regards Biden and Trump as likely "super agers" despite signs of frailty from Biden and Trump's physical health.
"Biden is likely to outlive Trump because he has fewer harmful risk factors and he does exercise quite notably, whereas Trump does not," he said. But overall, "they're both functioning at a very high level."
"If you don't like what they say," he added, "it's not because of how old they are. It's because you don't like what they say."
The poll of 1,165 adults was conducted Aug. 10-14, 2023, using a sample drawn from NORC's probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 3.8 percentage points.
Contributing: Nathan Ellgren and Linley Sanders
