Last Updated on November 17, 2021
A new poll from Politico shows that the majority of American voters do not think that Joe Biden is in good health, nor is he mentally fit.
Out of 1,998 registered voters surveyed by Politico last week, 50% of voters did not think that Joe Biden is “in good health,” with 48% of voters also believing that Biden is not “mentally fit.” Compared to a poll from October 2020 when the questions were last asked, Biden has seen a huge decline, with a 29 point shift and 21 point shift away from him being mentally healthy and mentally fit respectively.
In what would not come to as a surprise to anyone, the responses to the poll follow a general partisan split, with 87% of supporters of President Trump believing Biden is not in good health, while 71% of Biden voters believing the opposite. However, with Independent voters, 54% believe Biden is not in good health and 47% think he is not mentally fit, compared to 31% and 42% who disagree respectively. This is a big shift from before the election, when independents believed Biden was more mentally fit and healthier than his opponent.
The results matched up with a recent Harvard-Harris poll, which showed that 53% of voters said they had doubts about Biden’s fitness, and 58% who said he is too old to be president. Voters in the Politico poll also believed that Biden is not a clear communicator by 20 points, that he is not energetic by 26 points, and that he is not a strong leader by 17 points.
Celinda Lake, a Democrat pollster, put the blame for the shift in polling all on the shoulders of Republican messaging. “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,” ignoring the numerous “gaffes” and “senior moments” that Biden has had while in office.
Neil Newhouse, a Republican pollster, highlighted that Biden is even losing support among black voters, pointing to a recent focus group of black Southern voters. “Biden is definitely slow on a lot of things. I’m not sure if it is because of his age, or if he’s still going after 30 decades ago,” one respondent in the group said. When asked if she would back Biden in the 2024 elections, she replied that she would, if he was still alive by then.
National File reported last week on text exchanges between Hunter Biden, Joe’s son, and Keith Ablow, the former psychiatrist and Fox News contributor, where both Hunter and Ablow seemed to acknowledge that Joe has dementia. “Does he recall details tho, with the dementia and all?” Ablow asked at one point. “Not much these days but since it’s all fake news anyway I don’t see the problem,” Hunter replied.
