Poll Shows Voters Doubt Biden’s ‘Health’ and ‘Mental Fitness’

A POLITICO/Morning Consult Poll shows Americans are increasingly concerned over the health and mental fitness of President Biden. Biden is the oldest man ever sworn into office. “Only 40 percent of voters surveyed agreed with the statement that Biden ‘is in good health,’ while 50 percent disagreed. That 10-percentage-point gap — outside the poll’s margin of error — represents a massive 29-point shift since October 2020, when Morning Consult last surveyed the question and found voters believed Biden was in good health by a 19-point margin.”

1,998 registered voters were polled November 13-15. The voters didn’t find Biden a clear communicator by 20 points, and didn’t find him energetic by 26 points. They did not find him a strong leader by 17 points.

“Asked whether Biden is mentally fit, voters are almost evenly split, with 46 percent saying he is and 48 percent disagreeing. But that negative 2-point margin stands in stark contrast to Biden’s numbers last October, when voters believed he was mentally fit by a 21-point margin” reports POLITICO.

“The poll questions are part of a long battery of attributes about which voters were asked to rate Biden — the same battery employed multiple times during Donald Trump’s presidency, and asked about both candidates last fall, prior to the 2020 presidential election.”

Biden turns 79 on Saturday and curiosity is sparking political circles as to whether or not he will run for reelection in three years. Additionally, “Democrats have grown increasingly concerned with the party’s gerontocracy. Biden says he will run again, but some longtime allies have raised doubts. Even “Saturday Night Live” recently ribbed Biden over whether he was “lucid.”

POLITICO writes:

The most intense scrutiny of Biden’s age and his verbal miscues had previously been limited to conservative news outlets and social media, said Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster who has surveyed for Biden.

“They’re running a very aggressive campaign on this, and it’s bleeding over into the mainstream a little,” Lake said. “By and large, the people who believe this are Trump supporters anyway or they’ve been exposed to the right-wing disinformation machine.”

To Lake’s point, the Morning Consult poll generally shows that Trump voters and Republicans generally believe Biden is neither physically nor mentally fit, and Biden voters believe the opposite. However, independents — by a margin of 23 points — don’t agree that Biden is mentally fit now.

Before last year’s election, independents and voters overall believed Biden was more physically and mentally fit than Trump, whose mismanagement of the pandemic damaged his campaign as the Biden camp embraced social distancing and mostly eschewed large events.

But with Trump gone as a foil for now, Biden is more in the spotlight than ever, and his overall approval rating began collapsing with the bloody withdrawal from Afghanistan. The ravages of the coronavirus Delta variant, congressional squabbling and public perceptions about the economy also contributed to Biden’s troubles.

The new Morning Consult poll shows 44 percent give Biden a positive job approval rating and 53 percent disapprove. Biden’s approval rating is essentially unchanged over the past two weeks — it was 46 percent last week and 45 percent the week prior — since the passage of the infrastructure bill in Congress earlier this month.