Donald Trump is losing the support of older voters, according to a new poll.
In March, the former president won enough primary races to secure the Republican nomination in the 2024 presidential election. He will face the incumbent President Joe Biden in November and polls have so far shown that the results of the 2020 White House rematch will be tight, with the pair statistically tied or holding only marginal leads in a number of surveys.
However, a new Marist poll in the key swing state Pennsylvania has shown that Biden is narrowing the gap between himself and Trump in this state among the older demographic, a key demographic of voters. Due to the U.S’s Electoral College system, which awards each state a certain number of electoral votes based on population, state polls are more reliable in determining the result of the election.
The poll of 1,181 people found that, of voters over the age of 45, 48 percent said they support Trump while 45 percent said they support Biden.
While the poll showed that Trump is still ahead by three percentage points, it marks a decline in support from 2020, when Trump carried voters aged 45 or over by 12 percentage points in the state.
The survey was carried out between June 3 and June 6. It has a margin of error of +/- 3.6 percentage points.
Newsweek contacted a representative for Trump by email to comment on this story.
A January Quinnipiac University poll of around 1,600 voters in Pennsylvania also suggested 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.
However, according to another survey conducted this week by Yahoo News and YouGov, 41 percent of respondents ages over 65 said they’d vote for Biden and 52 percent said they’d choose Trump.
Meanwhile, when voters of all ages were polled, the Marist survey found that 47 percent intend to vote for Trump in November’s presidential election while 45 percent intend to vote for Biden.
Speaking to Newsweek, Mark Shanahan, an expert in American politics at the University of Surrey in the U.K., suggested Trump’s recent conviction in his hush money case may be to blame for him losing support in the state.
On May 30, Trump was found guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records related to a $130,000 hush-money payment made to former adult film star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 presidential election. Trump’s lawyers have said they are appealing the guilty verdict.
“Older people, as a whole, care more about crime and whether a candidate acts reputably with integrity and morality,” Shanahan said. “It would seem that there is cut-through with them on Trump, both with regards to his ongoing refusal to accept the 2020 presidential election result, and his 34 recent felony convictions in the New York court.”
William F. Hall, adjunct professor of political science and business at Webster University in St. Louis, Missouri, told Newsweek older voters were disillusioned by Trump’s public and personal behavior.
“I would interpret this shift in support among older voters, between 2020 and 2024, to be motivated primarily due to a growing sense of disillusionment and disagreement by older voters with the handling of both his political and personal affairs on the part of former President Trump, especially including his persistence in claiming the 2020 election was stolen as well as his indictments and now convictions over multiple criminal cases,” he said.
He continued: “I believe that these two issues, unlike perhaps in the past, especially as the election date becomes nearer, are now beginning to weigh negatively much more heavily, particularly on the minds of older voters.”
The presidential election takes place on November 5.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
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