With pandemic dominating U.S. election, older voters turning away from Trump

Many older Americans have turned away from President Donald Trump this year as the coronavirus ravages the country, eroding an important Republican support base that helped propel him into the White House in 2016, Reuters/Ipsos polling data shows.

Trump and his Democratic opponent Joe Biden now split American voters aged 55 years and older almost evenly: 47% say they are voting for Biden on Nov. 3 while 46% back Trump, according to Reuters/Ipsos national surveys in September and October.

That could be an alarming sign for the president, who trails Biden with 25 days to go before the election.

Republicans have relied on the support of older Americans in national elections for years, routinely benefiting from a demographic that consistently shows up in force on Election Day.

Trump won the 55-plus age group by 13 percentage points in 2016, according to exit polls. Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential nominee in 2012, achieved the same margin.

Reuters/Ipsos state polls also show Biden outperforming Hillary Clinton, the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, among older voters in a handful of battleground states, where seniors make up an outsized proportion of the electorate.

Winning those states will be critical to the outcome of the 2020 race: whoever takes the most battleground states will be on track to win the Electoral College and the White House.

Biden is beating Trump among older voters in Wisconsin by 10 points and drawing about the same amount of support as Trump is with that demographic in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Florida and Arizona, according to the state polls conducted in mid-September and early October.

Four years ago, Trump won older voters in each of those states by 10 to 29 points.

Half of the older voters in the five battleground states blamed the high number of COVID-19 cases and deaths in the country – nearly 7.6 million cases and more than 210,000 deaths – on “poor leadership and policy decisions from President Trump,” the polls show.

Randy Bode, 59, a Republican in Douglas, Arizona, who voted for Trump in 2016, said he was disappointed with Trump’s suggestion that people could protect themselves from COVID-19 by drinking bleach.

“He shouldn’t be saying the things he’s saying” about the coronavirus, he said.

Bode, who is now undecided, is also concerned about Trump’s efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act and how that would leave millions of Americans without health insurance during a health crisis.

“He’s had four years to come up with a plan, and he hasn’t done it,” he said.