President Donald Trump is unlikely to do well among young voters, but because seniors voters are going to outnumber younger ones, his performance among the older vote will be a deciding factor in his 2020 re-election campaign, according to The Wall Street Journal.
"Given the antipathy that younger voters have toward [Trump], he really needs support among seniors to reach at least the support he received in 2016," Hart Research Associates Democratic pollster Jeff Horwitt told the Journal.
Seniors are not just the most likely to turn out to vote in most elections – two-thirds of them voted in 2018 compared to 53% of the entire voting-age population – they are now also projected to be almost 25% of the electorate, according to the report.
He is trailing Democratic presidential primary frontrunners among seniors, 43% to 55%, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., by 8 points, and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., by 7 points, according to July's The Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll.
"Right now, I'm a Biden man, but the only reason I am is because, according to all the polls, he could beat Trump," 65-year-old Fort Wayne, Indiana truck driver David Freund told the Journal.
President Trump, who polls at just 33% among voters 18 to 34 years old, won the senior vote against Hillary Clinton in 2016, but he has some ground to cover for 2020.
"He's trying to trumpet himself to the public to make them feel as good about him as he does," a 69-year-old retired firefighter union president in Lancaster, California, David Smith told the Journal. "What I would like to see him do is shut his mouth."
President Trump paints the 2020 as capitalism vs. socialism, which experts say is a way to attract the older voters.
"Seniors are particularly resistant to some of those more leftward lurches," Public Opinion Strategies pollster Nicole McCleskey told the Journal.
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