With Biden Out, Trump Faces Bulk of Voters’ Age Concerns

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Former President Donald Trump has lost his advantage on voters’ concerns about the presidential candidates’ age and fitness as Vice President Kamala Harris makes up ground on a number of positive traits following President Joe Biden’s departure from the race. 

At the same time, Morning Consult’s weekly political tracking shows Harris is performing better against Trump than Biden did on gaining voters’ trust across a range of key issues — a finding that’s backed up by our swing-state surveys on behalf of Bloomberg News.     

Voters’ vibes on Trump and Harris

Compared with Biden before he ended his campaign, our latest survey shows voters nationwide are far more likely to say Harris is in good health (71% to 30%), mentally fit (64% to 35%) or a strong leader (48% to 38%).

Not surprisingly, Harris’ replacement of Biden has now erased the Democratic Party’s age problem with the American electorate. That burden has now shifted to Trump.

Beyond age, Harris also performs better than Biden on questions of trustworthiness and empathy (“cares about people like me”), a theme that our Bloomberg News survey shows persists at the swing-state level. 

While Harris leads Trump on the question of “cares about people like me” in each of the seven swing states surveyed, the two compete over the “presidential” descriptor and Trump has a slight advantage on the question of who is a “strong leader.”  Along with the half of voters nationwide that now say Trump is “too old,” similar shares say the same in the swing states even.

The electorate’s age concerns falling on Trump come after a survey conducted before Biden’s exit from the contest found more than 1 in 3 voters (36%) — including 45% of independents — said it is unlikely the Republican nominee would be capable of serving a full four-year term in office if elected in November.

 Among these voters who questioned whether Trump could finish a full second term, their fears are less likely to center on his fragility or longevity than they were about Biden, whose bid was toppled by questions about his age. Instead, they center on perceptions of how Trump will behave — similar to swing-state voters’ worry that Trump is “dangerous.” 

Roughly half of all voters said they’re concerned about Trump’s erratic behavior due to his age, including 4 in 5 of those who questioned whether Trump will be able to complete a full term. Similar shares say the same about his decision making abilities, while roughly 2 in 5 voters said they’re worried about diminishing America’s strength abroad.

Who voters trust to handle the issues

Beyond personal traits, voters are generally expressing more trust in Harris than they did in Biden to handle a range of issues facing the country.

Harris has widened the trust advantage that was held by Biden on handling abortion (her biggest lead), climate change, education, health care and protecting American democracy, while the numbers between her and Trump are much closer than they were between Biden and Trump when it comes to gun policy, crime, the economy and foreign policy. 

Trump leads Harris by 8 points among the national electorate when it comes to whom voters trust to handle immigration (49% to 41%), a gap that’s wider at the swing-state level (53% to 37%).

Further underlining a key vulnerability in the early part of her 2024 campaign, an aggregate look at surveys conducted in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin shows Harris gets the most blame from battleground voters on the issue of immigration. 

Roughly 2 in 5 voters said they think Harris has had a negative impact on immigration policy in the United States, compared with 31% who think she’s affected the matter positively, marking the highest impact score among the nine issues tested. On the other hand, Harris gets her best marks on abortion, with 43% saying she’s had a positive impact on the issue.

The bottom line

Harris has wiped out the Democratic Party’s age problem and has the chance to shift that narrative against Trump given voters’ concerns about his behavior and erraticism. With Biden out of the race, the environment for Democrats regarding empathy and trustworthiness has also improved, though Trump is still competitive on those fronts. 

When it comes to the issues, Harris’ biggest challenge will be to stave off the Republican Party’s immigration attacks that have been building for years given the unpopularity of Biden’s immigration policies — and her early public involvement in them. She’s more in line than Biden was with voters — both nationally and in the swing states — when it comes to the economy, which is consistently voters’ top issue, though she also has work to do on that front. 

The data shows Harris’ best issue with the electorate is abortion, something she’s taken under her wing ever since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overturned Roe v. Wade’s federal protection for abortions. Harris and Democrats are on comfortable ground when they lean into voters’ concerns about abortion rights under Republican-backed policies — an issue that has proven energizing for the party’s candidates.