Former President Donald Trump has increasing support from voters under age 30 in a hypothetical matchup with President Joe Biden, according to an Emerson College poll released Friday, amid larger concerns from younger voters over Biden’s age and mental fitness.
Other polls suggest young voters believe President Joe Biden may be too old to serve a second term.
Trump leads Biden 47% to 45%, with 8% undecided, in the Emerson College poll of nearly 1,600 registered voters between October 16 and 17 (with a 2.4% margin of error).
Voters under 30 barely favor Trump (45%) over Biden (43%, with 12% undecided)—but those numbers are noteworthy because of Biden’s easy margin of victory over Trump in 2020 with voters under 30, 59% to 35%.
Among other potential matchups, Trump leads Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.) 48% to 40% with 12% undecided, while Biden leads Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) 40% to 30%, with 29% undecided.
Trump is also the only candidate in the double digits for the Republican primary (59%), followed by Nikki Haley at 8%, Ron DeSantis at 4% and Mike Pence at 3%.
Biden still has the support of a majority of Democratic voters (70%), followed by Marianne Williamson at 10% and 20% who say they are undecided.
In a separate Emerson College survey released last month, both Trump and Biden received 45% of support while 10% said they were undecided.
50%. That’s the percentage of people aged 18 to 29 who voted in the 2020 presidential election, an 11-point increase over the previous election (39%), according to Tufts University’s Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement. Biden received nearly 60% of these votes.
The Emerson College poll follows a poll released earlier this year by the Associated Press and the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, which indicated younger voters—and a majority of Democrats—believed Biden, 80, was too old to serve a second term. About 76% of Democrats aged 18 to 29 said they believed Biden was too old to run for president in 2024, while 43% of all Democrats said they would still support Biden as the presidential nominee. The poll said 69% of all Democrats believed that age was a larger factor in electing Biden over Trump, who is 77. The poll also indicated that Biden was more associated by voters (26%) with the terms “old,” “outdated,” “aging” and “elderly” than Trump (1%), who was more associated (15%) with the terms “corrupt,” “criminal” and “crooked.”
Post-ABC Poll: Biden Faces Criticism On Economy, Immigration And Age (Washington Post)