They are the oldest candidates running for president in the US: what if Biden and Trump don’t make it to the end of the race?

There are situations in which anticipating someone’s death or disability becomes an exercise in inevitable speculation. The Constitutions (including the Portuguese one) generally have rules stipulated for what to do in the event of the head of State’s sudden incapacity, for whatever reason. The question becomes pertinent – although potentially morbid – when one of the most important and demanding positions in the world is contested by two men whose clinical status is increasingly questioned and whose legal battles will take up a lot of airtime this year.

Joe Biden and Donald Trump are candidates for President of the United States and they are both objectively old. On election day, they will be 81 and 78 years old, respectively, which means either of them exceeds the average life expectancy in the country – 73.5 years for men. Both candidates are also the oldest in the history of presidential elections, surpassing the record they themselves set in 2020.

Both the current and former Presidents have a long history of gaffes and memory lapses, of trips, falls or displays of physical fragility. But even considering Trump’s confusing speeches and random epiphanies, it is Biden who generates the greatest unrest among voters.

A New York Times and Sienna College poll from early March concluded that 73% of registered voters agree that Biden is “too old to be an effective President.” The age of the current leader is, according to the survey, much more contested than that of Trump, who is only four years younger. And the special prosecutor Robert Hur’s report about the President’s alleged lack of memory did not help to allay fears even while the White House tried to defend the Democrat’s intellectual acumen and good health.