NEW YORK: American voters are broadly sceptical that US President Joe Biden is mentally fit to serve a second term, and most do not think his potential general election rival Donald Trump is mentally fit either, according to a Quinnipiac University poll published Wednesday, reported German news agency (dpa).
Sixty-four percent of respondents in the poll said Biden was mentally unfit for another term, a bleak data point for the president in a survey where he, nonetheless, outperformed his topline numbers in many other polls. Fifty-one percent of voters told the pollster they did not think Trump was mentally fit for a second term on Pennsylvania Avenue.
The 81-year-old Biden, whose mental acuity has been under heightened scrutiny after Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report this month characterised him as an “elderly man with a poor memory”, has pushed back on concerns about his memory and has shown no public signs of pulling back from his reelection campaign.
As Biden marches towards the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, the 77-year-old Trump has been gliding to the Republican nomination while holding leads over the current president in public opinion polls.
Quinnipiac’s national poll was an outlier: Biden led Trump by four points, even as two-thirds of voters said they judged Biden to be too old to serve another full term in the White House, according to the pollster.
Separately, an Economist/YouGov poll published Wednesday showed Biden a point behind Trump. Both Quinnipiac and YouGov are respected pollsters.
Many other surveys have shown Trump with larger leads over Biden. But the election is more than 250 days away, and public opinion on both candidates may shift markedly between now and November. -Bernama-dpa
