Trump’s Trouble with Seniors: Key Voters Slip Away in the Final Stretch.

The senior wall that traditionally shields Republican presidential candidates is beginning to shake.

If this had come from another pollster, I might have dismissed it. But it’s from ABC News and Ipsos, and I can’t ignore Ipsos—they were among the very few who got it right in 2020.

A lot of pollsters were all over the place in the final 2020 stretch, but Ipsos came very close to the final numbers. So, I pay much more attention to their polls compared to those from other pollsters.

Earlier today, ABC News/Ipsos released a poll showing Kamala Harris leading Donald Trump by 4 points, 51 to 47.

The numbers might look surprising, and at first glance I thought it might be because of the exit poll data Ipsos had used to do the comparison. But the exit polls they used weren’t too far away from the final 2020 election data released by Pew Research. You can check Pew’s numbers here.

In 2020, Pew Research reported that Trump won the 65+ demographic by 4 points, 52 to 48. As of today, Harris has completely reversed this. She is now leading Trump by 5 points.

The key takeaway here is that Trump has slipped by 6 points with this crucial demographic.

This is one of the highest-turnout groups, making it particularly bad news for Donald Trump. The issue for the MAGA base, which claims that Trump is poised for a breakout, is that Trump has struggled with this demographic from the beginning.

In June 2024, a Marist poll in Pennsylvania showed Trump leading Biden by only three points among voters over the age of 45.

Trump’s advantage among older voters has evaporated. He carried voters 45 or older by 12 percentage points in 2020. Now, three percentage points separate Trump (48%) and Biden (45%) among this group. - Marist, June 2024, PA

Therefore, the ABC/Ipsos poll showing Trump slipping with voters aged 65+ cannot be dismissed as an anomaly or outlier. It may very well signal the surge that often emerges in the final stage of the race.

The challenge for Trump and the MAGA base is that voters over 65 consistently show high turnout rates. These are high-propensity voters, with a strong turnout rate of 72% in the 2020 election.