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- Around one-in-three Americans says they aren’t satisfied with President Joe Biden’s mental acuity.
- A sizeable majority, 61%, are at least somewhat to extremely confident in Biden’s cognitive abilities.
- Insider’s poll found Republican voters and older Americans are more likely to be dissatisfied.
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Despite questions over President Joe Biden’s mental fitness persisting throughout the 2020 campaign, most Americans say he’s up for the job while 33% say they’re dissatisfied with his mental sharpness, a new Insider poll found.
Insider polled a nationwide sample of 1,154 Americans in conjunction with SurveyMonkey on February 22 with a 3 percentage point margin of error.
The poll revealed that Biden, 78, has the support of 61% of Americans when it comes to whether he’s up for the job.
The president maintains these numbers despite former President Donald Trump dedicating much of his campaign to depicting Biden as senile, with Trump even going so far as to demand Biden take a cognitive test and that he be tested for performance-enhancing drugs after a stronger debate performance against Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Those Trump attacks ended up inadvertently benefiting Biden by lowering expectations for his speeches and debate performances, but the president’s age has left an opening for less hyperbolic questions to linger.
Those who filled out Insider's SurveyMonkey Audience poll were asked "How confident do you feel about President Biden's mental sharpness and ability to do the job of president?"
- 24% said they are "extremely confident."
- Almost 20% said they're "very confident."
- 17.7% said they're just "somewhat confident."
- 10.8% said they are "not so confident."
- 22.8% said they are "not at all confident."
- Almost 5% said they "don't know."
Age and party affiliation appeared to have impacted people's responses:
- 31% of respondents over the age of 60 said they are "not at all confident" in Biden's ability to carry out his duties as president.
- Only 12% of those who are between 18 and 29 years old held the same view.
- 50% of those who said they would probably vote in their state's Republican primaries or caucuses said they are "not at all confident" in Biden's mental sharpness, the highest of any demographic we tracked.
- Almost 70% of likely Democratic primary voters said they're either "extremely confident" or "very confident" in Biden's cognition and ability to do the job.
SurveyMonkey Audience polls from a national sample balanced by census data of age and gender. Respondents are incentivized to complete surveys through charitable contributions. Generally speaking, digital polling tends to skew toward people with access to the internet. SurveyMonkey Audience doesn't try to weight its sample based on race or income. Polling data collected 1,154 respondents February 22, 2021 with a 3 percentage point margin of error.