Former President Donald Trump holds a narrow lead over President Biden in the incumbent’s birth state of Pennsylvania, a new poll has found.
Trump, 77, gets 49% support among likely Keystone State voters while Biden, 81, has 45% with fewer than six months to go until Election Day, according to the survey conducted by Fabrizio Ward & Impact Research for the Pennsylvania chapter of the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP).
Trump’s advantage over Biden, 81, was even more pronounced among voters aged 50 and up, with the former president getting 52% support in the demographic while his successor got 42%.
According to AARP Pennsylvania, 50 and older voters made up more than half (55%) of the commonwealth’s electorate in 2020, when Biden defeated Trump by a little more than 80,000 votes out of more than 6.8 million ballots cast.
“Pennsylvania voters over age 50 are a critical voting bloc that all candidates are competing for in this election,” said Bill Johnston Walsh, state director of AARP Pennsylvania.
“Pennsylvanians of all political stripes want leaders to protect Social Security and provide support for family caregivers. If candidates want to win, they should pay attention to the issues that matter to Pennsylvanians ages 50-plus.”
Four in five older Pennsylvania voters say that candidates’ positions on Social Security will be important in deciding who they will support Nov. 5, while 73% said the same of Medicare and two-thirds (67%) said the cost of prescription drugs was vital to their vote.
In all, 85% of respondents 50 and up said they were “extremely motivated” to vote this cycle.
Biden has sought to peel older voters away from Trump by accusing him of plotting to slash Social Security and Medicare, a claim the 45th president has denied.
The trust funds behind both programs are careening toward bankruptcy, according to the trustees’ annual reports.
Social Security’s main trust fund is set to run dry on cash in late 2033, while the Medicare Trust fund is expected to reach insolvency in 2036, per the reports released this week.
According to RealClearPolitics, Trump leads Biden by an average of 1.6 percentage points in surveys of the battleground state.
RCP also has Trump leading Biden head-to-head in the key states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, and Wisconsin — all of which the Republican lost four years ago, with the exception of North Carolina.
Pennsylvania is also home to one of the most-watched Senate races of 2024 between incumbent Democrat Bob Casey Jr. and Republican businessman David McCormick.
Casey led McCormick 48% to 44% among all likely Pennsylvania voters, but narrowly trails the Republican 48% to 47% among voters 50 and up.
The survey sampled 1,398 likely Pennsylvania voters April 24-30, including a statewide sample of 600 likely voters with a margin of error of plus-or-minus 4 percentage points.
It also included an oversample of 800 voters aged 50 and up with a margin of error of plus-or-minus 3.5 percentage points.
