Nate Silver Gives Dire Prediction About Joe Biden's Chances

Nate Silver has said that recent polling shows President Joe Biden's age is a big problem for voters.

The latest national NBC News poll found Biden's approval rating has plummeted to the lowest level of his presidency (40 percent), with majorities disapproving of his handling of foreign policy and the Israel-Hamas war.

The survey also found Biden trailing former President Donald Trump in a hypothetical matchup, although the deficit is within the poll's margin of error.

Silver, the creator of the FiveThirtyEight website, said the results show again that many Americans do not want Biden to seek a second term because of his age.

Biden, who turned 81 on Monday, is already the oldest person elected president. If reelected, he would be 86 by the end of his second term in office. Trump, who is leading the race for the Republican nomination to challenge Biden in 2024, is 77.

"Polls a year out aren't very predictive of election outcomes, that's true," Silver wrote in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

"The issue is Biden is going to turn 81 [on Monday], voters are communicating through polls that he's way too old and that this is a *big* problem, and there's no particularly good reason to disbelieve them."

Silver and the Biden campaign have been contacted for comment via email.

Silver was responding to a post from Jim Messina, the manager of President Barack Obama's 2012 campaign, who wrote that polls "a year out are about as good at predicting election results as a magic 8 ball would be. They just don't show the full picture."

Messina wrote in Politico on Monday that while polling "is screaming doom and gloom for a Democratic incumbent," it is too early to get an accurate view on how people will vote in 2024.

In that piece, he also noted that Silver's 2011 analysis that declared Obama would not win reelection the following year did not age well.

Voters would move to Biden once they are reminded "of the chaotic, lawless circus that was Trump's presidency," Messina wrote.

The Biden administration has sought to quell fears about the president's age and ability to do the job by underscoring his record.

"In 2019, he got the same criticism; in 2020, he got the same criticism; in 2022, he got the same criticism. And every time he beats the naysayers," White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters in September.

"I get the question on age. Certainly, we all do. But what we're going to continue to talk about is the record that this president has had. It's been a historic record."

Biden has sometimes addressed the concerns that he is too old to occupy the Oval Office with humor. "I know I'm 198 years old," he joked in June.

But a series of polls in recent months have shown that Biden is widely seen as too old for office.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted in mid-September found 77 percent of respondents, including 65 percent of Democrats, think Biden is too old to be president, while just 39 percent said Biden was mentally sharp enough for the presidency. In contrast, 56 percent of respondents said Trump is too old for the office, while 54 percent said he was mentally capable of holding the position.

A poll by The Associated Press/NORC Center for Public Affairs Research in August found most Democrats say both Biden and Trump are too old for another term, while Republicans tend to say that Biden is too old, but Trump is not.