Trump is the oldest person to be elected president: U.S. presidents, by age
When Donald Trump first won the 2016 election at 70 years old, he became the oldest person to be elected U.S. president - and the first to be in his 70s at the start of his term. President Joe Biden surpassed that record four years later, when he won the 2020 race at age 77.
Trump, who is now 78, has taken the record back as the oldest person to be elected U.S. president. And he will be the oldest president to take the office - older than Biden was, by about five months.
He will be 82 on Jan. 20, 2029, when he is expected to leave the White House at the end of his second nonconsecutive term.
Age was an important issue for voters this year. Intense focus on the health and age of Biden, who turns 82 on Nov. 20, ended with his withdrawal from his reelection campaign. In July, a Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll found that 60 percent of Americans said Trump is too old for another term as president.
Who were some of the other oldest presidents?
According to the Pew Research Center, most U.S. presidents were in their 50s at their inauguration (including those who were reelected), with an overall average age of 55.
While the last three presidential elections have set records for the oldest presidents elected, Americans are also generally living longer in the last century.
Four presidents were in office when they were in their 70s (including Biden, who turned 80 in office), but only Biden and Trump took office when they were already in their 70s. Few world leaders are as old as either man, as The Washington Post reported.
The next-oldest president was Ronald Reagan, who was 73 when he won his second term in 1984. He was 77 when he left office in 1989, after eight years as president.
While he was in his early 60s, Reagan was asked if his age would affect any potential future presidential bid. Voters “will know my age, and they’ll make that determination,” he said, noting that, “we have had presidents that have pretty much spanned adulthood as to their age and it has not seemed to affect the people.”
Dwight D. Eisenhower was 70 when he left office in January 1961. He was aware of the potential effects of age on his job, writing in his diary in 1954 while contemplating the reasons against seeking a second term that there was a “greater likelihood that a man of 70 will break down under a load than a man of 50,” according to the New Yorker - though it would be more than six more years before he left office.
Jimmy Carter, who turned 100 this year and is the country’s longest-living president, was 56 when he left office in 1981.
On the other side of the spectrum, John F. Kennedy, the youngest elected president in the country’s history, was 43 at his inauguration in 1960; he was assassinated in November 1963 at age 46.