Donald Trump Has a Big Problem With Older Voters

Donald Trump is failing to attract significant support among older voters in Pennsylvania, according to a poll.

While President Joe Biden secured a narrow victory over Trump in the key swing state in 2020, recent polls have suggested he may lose it to Trump in November 2024.

In the 2020 election, Trump narrowly won among older voters but since then, polls have shown Biden's standing with the demographic has improved and he is more popular among older people than he is among other age groups.

According to a Quinnipiac University poll of around 1,600 voters in Pennsylvania, the former president is trailing behind his Democratic rival among older voters. While 60 percent of voters aged 65 and over said they would vote for Biden, 37 percent said they would vote for Trump.

Newsweek contacted a Trump spokesperson by email to comment on this story.

Overall, 49 percent of voters polled said they would support Biden while 46 percent supported Trump.

Biden's popularity in the state is up by 4 percent since October when a Quinnipiac University poll found he enjoyed 45 percent of voters' support compared to Trump's 47 percent.

The latest polling was conducted from January 4 to 8. The sample size was 1,680 people with a +/- 3.8 percent margin of error.

The poll will come as a boost to the Biden campaign following a series of surveys late last year that showed him losing to Trump in most of the battleground states. In October, an Emerson College poll of 430 voters showed Biden trailing behind the former president by nine points in Pennsylvania.

In November, a New York Times/Siena College poll of 3,662 registered voters showed Trump was ahead of Biden in the state, 48 to 44 percent.

In the same month, a survey by Big Data Poll found Trump led Biden by 3.5 points in the swing state.

Meanwhile, the most up-to-date voter registration data from the Pennsylvania Department of State shows that 35,589 registered Democrats switched to their party affiliation Republican in 2023, as of December 18, 2023. Comparably, 15,622 registered Republicans have switched their party affiliation to Democrat. There were also 20,908 former Democrats and 18,927 former Republicans who are now unaffiliated with either party.

A YouGov/ CBS News poll of 1,906 likely voters last week had Trump in the lead with 50 percent of the vote to Biden's 48 percent.

But in the same week, a YouGov/ The Economist poll of 1,417 registered voters showed the pair each with 43 percent of the vote.

Newsweek contacted a spokesperson for Biden by email to comment on this story.

Mark Shanahan an associate professor in politics at the University of Surrey in the U.K. said the poll's findings "could be significant."

"A caveat as always: this is just one poll," he said. "But there seems to be a trend with Biden's poll rating creeping up among older voters, and this could be significant. The majority of older voters are white and conservative and have tended to favor Republican candidates since George W. Bush. But the Biden administration has targeted areas that matter to seniors, especially around health, in a way they're simply not seeing from Trump. Biden's campaign to lower drug prices has resonated, and while seniors aren't seeing benefits yet, there's a real hope that if he's reelected, the cost of healthcare will fall significantly."

He added: "These voters, the Silent Generation and the Boomers have also seen it all and done it all. And many see Trump's campaign as either simply self-indulgent or downright dangerous. They are much more prepared to give Biden a pass on his age, are more likely to be seeing some benefit from his economic plans, and, most of all, have a bigger picture than most on the state of US democracy. Biden doesn't excite this group, but at least he doesn't frighten them."