There are divides on nearly every issue in American politics today. But many voters agree on one topic: Congress is too old.
An overwhelming majority of Americans — eight in 10 — favor setting age caps as well as term limits for members of Congress, according to the latest NPR/PBS News/Marist poll.
While neither idea is being seriously considered by Congress, support for both cuts across backgrounds and party lines. The poll found 78% of Democrats back both age caps and term limits. Eighty-three percent of Republicans supported maximum age limits, and nearly nine in 10 favored term limits.
The findings come as many Americans urge longtime lawmakers to pass the torch to a new generation they see as more representative of an electorate increasingly dominated by younger voters.
“I think it makes some sense that [we] do have older office holders, but that has some clear disadvantages,” said Jean Twenge, a professor of psychology at San Diego State University who studies generational differences. “People can be in office longer, but should they? I think what this poll shows is a lot of people think the answer to that is no.”
The poll found minimal differences across generations — older voters were about as likely as younger ones to support age caps and term limits. To Twenge, that indicates voters want change regardless of their own age. “There seems to be a consensus that people think if you’re going to be an effective leader, you should not be 80 years old,” she said.
The survey of 1,322 respondents was conducted April 27–30 and has a margin of error of +/- 3.1 percentage points. Respondents were reached by live caller, text and online.
Why voters want change
The issue of age in politics is not new, but recent years have amplified attention because of presidents who were in their late 70s or early 80s. Concerns about fitness for office have extended to Capitol Hill, where many top leaders are in their 70s, 80s and 90s. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is 75; Sen. Chuck Grassley, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, is 92.
There’s a sizable gap between the age of members of Congress and the broader workforce. The median age of a U.S. worker is 42, while the median age on Capitol Hill is 58 for House members and 65 in the Senate.
This Congress is the third oldest in U.S. history and has seen five members die since last March; each was 65 or older.
For some voters, that age gap contributes to a growing disconnect with leaders. “I feel that they just might be out of touch. You’ve got 70 and 80-year-olds in Congress … running the country,” said 18-year-old Michael Hatch of Eudora, Kansas. “It’s just not doing it for young people. It’s not representing people like me.”
A separate survey of 18- to 29-year-olds from research firm AlphaROC, shared with NPR, finds more than six in 10 in that age group believe politicians don’t represent their interests, and most say younger candidates are not taken seriously.
Calls for more representative leaders come from voters across generations. NPR’s poll shows Gen X — those in their late 40s to early 60s — had the highest levels of support for both term limits and age maximums.
Sixty-two-year-old Patricia L., a Democratic voter in Phoenix who asked NPR to use only her first name, said younger voices need to be in the room to address pressing issues such as affordability and housing. “When I think about the current generation of young adults and what they’re facing, things like affordability, things like housing … we have to have those voices in the room for these issues in order to be addressing problems that are happening right now,” she said. “I think that’s why some young people get so disengaged from politics, because they feel like they’re not being heard or they’re not being taken seriously because they’re young. As an older person, I don’t think that’s fair.”