Trump losing critical part of his base as older voters flock to Biden, report says

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President Donald Trump seemed to be slipping in the polls among a crucial faction of his base, as many older voters in critical states for his re-election appeared to support former Vice President Joe Biden.

The latest analysis from polling experts at Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight showed Mr Trump falling behind Mr Biden in key swing states like Florida, where a Quinnipiac University survey had the former vice president above the Republican incumbent by 52 percent to 42 percent in mid-April among voters 65 and older.

Mr Biden was meanwhile leading in the state that helped Mr Trump win his 2016 election among all voters, albeit by a narrow three-point margin, according to a Fox News poll.

That analysis could be paired with another report from CNN, which showed Mr Biden polling nearly six points higher than former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s final margin in the last presidential election. The CNN report included polls that had the presumptive Democratic nominee above Mr Trump in other states like Wisconsin, one of the determining states in 2016 along with Florida, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

Even Mr Trump’s own internal polling had him losing to Mr Biden among older voters, the New York Times reported, citing the coronavirus pandemic and his administration’s seemingly slow response to the Covid-19 outbreak in the US.

The president was behind Mr Biden by as much as 1.4 percent among 45 to 64-year-olds, according to FiveThirtyEight. His polling was worse than that of 2016 among all voting blocs above the age of 45, the analysis indicated.

Mr Trump won in 2016 in part because he received a majority of support among older voters, a demographic of Americans that historically go to the Republican candidate in presidential elections while younger voting blocs typically support the Democratic nominee.

However, polls are not necessarily always indicative of what may happen during the November vote — which is still more than five months away. Previous surveys had shown Mr Trump besting the former vice president among older voters, including a Pew Research Centre poll conducted in early April.

Yet the latest tracking data reportedly still showed Mr Biden above Mr Trump by as much as two percent among voters 65 and older. When it comes to voters between the ages of 45 to 64, the former vice president was ahead of Mr Trump by nearly seven points.