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 — 8 in 10 — are in favor of setting age caps as well as term limits for members of Congress, according to the latest NPR/PBS News/Marist poll.
While both ideas are hypothetical — neither is being seriously considered by Congress — support for each cuts across many backgrounds and party lines. The poll found that 78% of Democrats support both age caps and term limits. Eighty-three percent of Republicans backed maximum age limits, and nearly 9 in 10 supported term limits.
The findings come as many Americans have begun to demand that longtime lawmakers pass the torch to a new generation of leaders who 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?” she asked, explaining that as life expectancy has increased in recent decades, Americans are retiring later. “I think what this poll shows is a lot of people think the answer to that is no.”
The poll found that there are minimal differences when comparing generations — older voters were just as likely to support age caps and term limits as younger voters. To Twenge, it’s an indication that voters are looking for 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 from April 27 to April 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. However, in recent years, the issue has gained outsized attention because of Joe Biden, who left the presidency at the age of 82, and then President Trump, who returned to the White House at 78. Both faced questions about their fitness for office.
Those concerns have extended to Capitol Hill, where many top leaders are in their 70s, 80s and 90s. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., for example, is 75. Chuck Grassley, the Iowa Republican who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, is 92.
When comparing the age breakdown of Congress to the rest of the American workforce, there’s a sizable gap. The median age of a worker in the U.S. is 42 years old. However, on Capitol Hill, that jumps to 58 for members of the House and 65 in the Senate.
The current Congress is now the third oldest in U.S. history, and has seen five members die since last March. Each was 65 or older.
For some voters, the widening age difference between them and members of Congress is contributing to an already growing disconnect that they feel 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, who lives in Eudora, Kansas. “It’s just not doing it for young people. It’s not representing people like me.
Hatch is part of a generation feeling significantly disaffected from politics. A new survey of 18 to 29-year-olds from the research company AlphaROC, shared first with NPR, finds that more than six in 10 believe politicians don’t really or don’t at all represent the interests of people their age. Plus, the vast majority of respondents believe younger candidates for office are not taken seriously.
But the call for more representative leaders is coming from voters across generations.
According to NPR’s poll, the age group with the highest levels of support for both term and age maximums in Congress is Gen X, those in their late 40s to early 60s.
That includes 62-year-old Democratic voter Patricia L. in Phoenix. She asked NPR to use only her first name out of concern for how discussing politics could affect her job.
“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,” she added. “As an older person, I don’t think that’s fair.”
