Is Donald Trump losing older voters in Florida – and with it the chance of reelection?

No state matters more to Republicans in November

Amid the many nuggets of insight pulled from the debris of the 2016 election was this: older voters went for Donald Trump more than they did Hillary Clinton.

In several battleground states such as Florida, voters aged 65 and over turned out for the Republican candidate by some margin. Nationally, Mr Trump bested his rival in this demographic by as many as nine percentage points.

But things may be changing. As the coronavirus pandemic drags on, bearing with it a lethality to which the elderly are especially vulnerable, so the president’s support among this age group appears to be softening. At the same time, support for Joe Biden, all but certain to be his challenger in November, is growing.

Of desperate concern to Mr Trump will be the fact that Florida is one of the places where support among senior appears to be slipping. A Quinnipiac poll published last month gave Mr Biden a 4 point leader over Mr Trump in the Sunshine State, and with the former vice president beating its current occupant by 10 points among those aged 65 and older.

More recently, a poll by Morning Consult found approval of the president’s handling of the pandemic was lower among the elderly than every other group, other than young voters. The same poll gave Mr Biden a 10-point lead nationally among seniors.

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“We’re at a time when partisanship is so strong and so intense that you don’t really see much evidence of defections from either side,” Professor Stephen Craig, director of the political campaigning programme at the University of Florida, told The Independent. “And yet what the surveys suggest, is that there’s beginning to be some defections on the Republican side.”

Mr Craig said Republicans did poorly in the 2018 midterms in part because Mr Trump lost support among college educated women. These latest polls, albeit taken six months from polling, represented something else Republicans ought to be concerned about.

Asked if the reason for the slip in support was the government’s response to the coronavirus, which has presently infected 1.5m Americans and killed at least 90,000, he said: “It’s hard to think that’s not at least part of the story.”

Reports suggest Mr Biden is making gains in other important states, including Virginia, which Democrats narrowly held four years ago, and Arizona. In 2016, Mr Trump beat Ms Clinton in Arizona 48 – 45, but changing demographics have made both Arizona and Florida Democratic targets. The New York Times this week quoted Mr Biden’s campaign manager, Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, as telling a recent fundraiser she was “bullish” on Arizona.

Long-considered the ultimate bellweather state, Florida’s seizure by Mr Trump in November 2016 presaged a night of stunning defeat for Ms Clinton.

Yet the state is of particular importance to Republicans. There are various “routes to the White House” for Democrats – for instance by taking back Michigan and Pennsylvania, which Mr Trump narrowly won in 2016, and bagging Arizona. Yet experts agree Mr Trump requires Florida and its 29 electoral college voters if he is to win a second term.

Florida also has the largest number of elderly voters – around 20 per cent compared to a national average of 16 per cent. Famous for its retirees and seasonal “Snowbirds”, it contains three of the nation’s five “greyest” counties, with the others being in Virginia and Arizona.

Just as it has upended so much else of normal life, so too has the coronavirus created new dynamics for the election that parties and politicians have to confront, as they juggle keeping people safe while ending the lockdowns and kick-starting the economy.

A recent poll taken by AARP, formerly known as the American Association of Retired Persons) found 62 per cent of older American were “very concerned” about the pandemic, with 32 per cent “somewhat concerned”. Elderly people of colour were particularly troubled.

“Older Americans realise the impact of this virus,” Bill Sweeney, AARP’s senior vice president for governmental affairs, said at the time. “They’re deeply, deeply concerned about it; they’re very worried for their own health care, worried about the health of their loved ones.”

Experts question how much can be learned from polls taken six months from election day.

But Beth Rosenson, a political scientist also based at the University of Florida, pointed out the state is one of the places where a small number of voters can make the crucial difference. In 2000, Republican George W Bush defeated Al Gore in Florida by just 537 votes and in doing so, secured the White House.

She said that in 2016, Mr Trump won the presidency by fewer than 80,000 voters spread across Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan. She added: “Votes are decided at the margins.”