By Jason Lange
WASHINGTON, Feb 24 (Reuters) – Six in ten Americans, including a significant slice of Republicans, think President Donald Trump has become erratic as he ages, according to a new Reuters/Ipsos poll.
The six-day poll concluded on Monday, the day before the 79-year-old president gives his annual State of the Union address to Congress following a month of angry reprimands of lawmakers and judges.
Overall, 61% of respondents in the poll said they would describe Trump as having “become erratic with age.” Some 89% of Democrats, 30% of Republicans and 64% of independents described him this way.
White House spokesman Davis Ingle said the poll results were examples of “fake and desperate narratives” and that “Trump’s sharpness, unmatched energy, and historic accessibility” set him apart from his predecessor in office, Democrat Joe Biden.
Trump’s overall popularity has been little changed in recent months. Some 40% of respondents in the latest poll approved of Trump’s performance as president, up two percentage points from earlier this month. While he started his term with a considerably higher rating at 47%, his approval has held within a point or two of its current level since April.
AGING U.S. LEADERSHIP
Most Americans think the country’s political leadership is generally too old.
Some 79% of poll respondents agreed with a statement that “elected officials in Washington, D.C., are too old to represent most Americans.” The average age in the U.S. Senate is about 64, and in the U.S. House of Representatives, it’s 58.
Democratic respondents were slightly more likely to call for younger politicians, with 58% of them saying top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer, 75, was too old to work in government.
Trump returned to office in January 2025 at age 78, becoming the oldest president on inauguration day in history. Since then, he has unveiled new policies and proposals at a dizzying pace, ordering sweeping tariffs on imports from dozens of countries and deploying masked federal agents across the country to crack down on unauthorized immigration.
He has often struck an angry tone in his public remarks, including last week when he said he was “absolutely ashamed” that the conservative-leaning U.S. Supreme Court struck down many of his tariffs as illegal. Trump went on to reinstate a series of new tariffs, arguing he could do so under a different legal authority. In November, he assailed Democratic lawmakers who urged members of the U.S. military to refuse any illegal orders, calling them traitors who could face execution.
AGE WEIGHED PREDECESSOR BIDEN
Trump won the 2024 presidential election in part because Biden – his Democratic predecessor in the White House – was widely seen to have lost mental acuity as he aged in office. Biden ended his tenure at age 82 – older than any president in U.S. history. Trump is on track to beat that record and will be 80 in June.
Only 45% of respondents in the February poll said they would describe Trump as “mentally sharp and able to deal with challenges,” down from 54% in a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted in September 2023.
Republicans continue to see the president as sharp, with 81% of them describing the president that way in the latest poll, little changed from the 2023 survey. Among Democrats, the share seeing the president able to deal with challenges fell to 19% from 29%. Among people who don’t identify with either political party, 36% saw Trump holding onto his mental acuity, down from 53% in 2023.
The latest Reuters/Ipsos poll, which was conducted online, surveyed 4,638 U.S. adults nationwide and had a margin of error of two percentage points.
(Reporting by Jason Lange; editing by Scott Malone and Alistair Bell)
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