Survey finds 61% of Americans — including 30% of Republicans — view President Donald Trump as increasingly erratic, as broader concerns grow over aging US political leadership
Six in ten Americans believe President Donald Trump has “become erratic with age,” according to a new Reuters/Ipsos poll released on the eve of his annual State of the Union address to Congress.
The six-day survey, which concluded Monday, found that 61% of respondents described the 79-year-old president as increasingly erratic. That view was shared by 89% of Democrats, 64% of independents and 30% of Republicans.
The findings come after a month in which Trump publicly rebuked lawmakers and judges, drawing heightened scrutiny of his rhetoric and leadership style.
According to Reuters, responding to the poll, White House spokesman Davis Ingle dismissed the results as “fake and desperate narratives,” saying “Trump’s sharpness, unmatched energy, and historic accessibility” distinguish him from his Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden.
Despite concerns about his temperament, Trump’s overall approval rating has remained relatively stable.
The poll found that 40% of Americans approve of his performance as president, up two percentage points from earlier this month. After beginning his term at 47%, his approval rating has fluctuated only slightly since April.
Aging US leadership
Most Americans think the country’s political leadership is generally too old.
Some 79% of poll respondents agreed with a statement that “elected officials in Washington, DC, are too old to represent most Americans.” The average age in the US Senate is about 64, and in the US House of Representatives, it’s 58.
Democratic respondents were slightly more likely to call for younger politicians, with 58% of them saying top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer, 75, was too old to work in government.
Trump returned to office in January 2025 at age 78, becoming the oldest president on inauguration day in history. Since then, he has unveiled new policies and proposals at a dizzying pace, ordering sweeping tariffs on imports from dozens of countries and deploying masked federal agents across the country to crack down on unauthorized immigration.
He has often struck an angry tone in his public remarks, including last week when he said he was “absolutely ashamed” that the conservative-leaning U.S. Supreme Court struck down many of his tariffs as illegal. Trump went on to reinstate a series of new tariffs, arguing he could do so under a different legal authority. In November, he assailed Democratic lawmakers who urged members of the U.S. military to refuse any illegal orders, calling them traitors who could face execution.
Age weighed predecessor Biden
Trump won the 2024 presidential election in part because Biden – his Democratic predecessor in the White House – was widely seen to have lost mental acuity as he aged in office. Biden ended his tenure at age 82 – older than any president in U.S. history. Trump is on track to beat that record and will be 80 in June.
Only 45% of respondents in the February poll said they would describe Trump as “mentally sharp and able to deal with challenges,” down from 54% in a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted in September 2023.
Republicans continue to see the president as sharp, with 81% of them describing the president that way in the latest poll, little changed from the 2023 survey. Among Democrats, the share seeing the president able to deal with challenges fell to 19% from 29%. Among people who don’t identify with either political party, 36% saw Trump holding onto his mental acuity, down from 53% in 2023.
The latest Reuters/Ipsos poll, which was conducted online, surveyed 4,638 U.S. adults nationwide and had a margin of error of two percentage points.
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