President Donald Trump’s approval rating among senior citizens continues to drop and is threatening his chances of winning important swing states like Florida, according to polls released on Sunday.
The most recent national Gallup survey found that Trump’s approval rating among seniors was 47 percent from late may to June compared to 51 percent from January to early May, reflecting a four-point drop. And a series CBS/YouGov polls released on Sunday revealed that former Vice President Joe Biden is “making inroads” with seniors in states like Arizona, Florida, and Texas “who have voted Republican in stronger numbers in these states in recent years” because of their dissatisfaction with the president’s handling of the Coronavirus pandemic.
In Florida, for instance, the CBS/YouGov poll found that Trump only has an 8-point lead among seniors, which is “just half of his margin among them four years ago.”
Nearly every national in the past month has found Trump trailing Biden with seniors, a group that reportedly favored Trump by 8 points in 2016. As NBC News pointed out, Trump was “down by 2 points in a New York Times/Siena College poll, 4 points in a CNN poll, 8 points in an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll and 8 points in a Quinnipiac University poll.
The Washington Post recently interviewed seniors across the country and concluded that seniors are turning on Trump because they “very much see 2020 as a referendum on the president, more so than an endorsement of Biden or his vision for the nation.”
Seniors are also reportedly concerned about recklessly reopening parts of the economy. Most told the Post that they are worried about “about grown children or grandchildren who have lost their jobs, had their pay slashed or are being rushed back to work in unsafe conditions.”
In addition, seniors are also taking issue with Trump’s tweets during the pandemic. The Post reported that “every single person” the outlet interviewed, “regardless of party, said “Trump needs to stop tweeting, speak more purposefully and stop being so divisive.” Other seniors reportedly “noted they are around the president’s age, 74, and would never act as he is acting” while many more “were particularly bothered by how Trump continues to fan the flames of racial tension in the country.”
They were also bothered, according to the Post, by Trump’s “coronavirus messaging” because “most seniors said they were urged by their doctors — and, more often, their children and grandchildren — not to leave the house during the pandemic unless necessary and to always wear a mask if they do.” They are reportedly “frustrated Trump isn’t conveying a similar message.”
According to a recent Politico report on the president’s “shrinking electoral map,” Trump’s declining support with seniors explains why the president is in trouble in states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, and Iowa. The outlet noted that Trump’s “standing among independents and seniors has eroded in those places amid his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, the economic slowdown and unrest spurred by the killing of George Floyd.”
NBC recently interviewed a North Carolina senior citizen who voted for Trump in 2016 and will be voting for Biden this year because he is fed up with having a president who is a “sociopath” and a “pathological liar.”
“At the end of the day, I want this to be a better country for my grandkids growing up. And having a president who’s a pathological liar, a sociopath, a narcissist, a misogynist and a bully is not the way I want to leave this country,” the senior citizen the outlet. “In spite of my views on the issues, I don’t see any way I could support him to be president for another four years because of how he’s behaved.”