Coming Soon: A Younger Senate

Of the last several decades, Congress -- all of Congress, although I'm just going to talk about the Senate in this post -- has become old.  Really old.  Sometimes scary-old, as in the final years of the late Robert Byrd or the late Strom Thurmand.  More often, run-of-the-mill old, as with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (b. 1939) or Mitch McConnell (b. 1942).  Certainly, record old.  The (current) 111th Senate when it began hit a record average age of 63.1 years.  The first to break 60 was the 109th Senate, and virtually all recent Congresses broke records for age.

However, we're in the midst of a major shake-up.  I've been tracking this for a while now, and it's now certain: we're headed, for the first time in years, younger.  Here's the rundown:

Seven Senators died or resigned during the 111th Congress: Byrd, Kennedy, Obama, Biden, Clinton, Salazar, and Martinez (counting Obama for Illinois, although he actually resigned in 2008; I don't know whether the CRS numbers above include him, Burris, or an open seat for Illinois -- nor do I know what they did with the other transition seats).  Their average age, had they all made it to the opening of the 112th Senate in January 2011, would have been 67.

Then we have retirements.  Eight more Senators -- Bayh, Bond, Brownback, Bunning, Dodd, Dorgan, Gregg, and Voinovich, are leaving at the end of this term.  Average age?  Just over 66 years old (again, all ages are as of January 2011).

With today's apparent announcement that Lisa Murkowski will run as a write-in candidate, two Senators exit after primary losses.  Specter is 80; Bennett is 77.

That's seventeen Senators who were elected or in office in November 2008 who won't be there in January 2011.  Their average age is almost exactly 68.

Now, the replacements.  I'll start with the sure things, which begin with Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown, a relatively youthful 51.  After that, I'll add candidates who Nate Silver rates as full locks: Gillibrand, Hoeven, Lee, and Moran.  Including Brown, those five incoming-unless-lightning-strikes Senators will average about 48.5 years old.  That, as it turns out, is a bit of a fluke.  In the other twelve vacated seats, the current leaders per Silver (Manchin, Kirk, Coons, Buck, Rubio, Coats, Blunt, Paul, Blumenthal, Ayotte, Portman, and Toomey) aren't quite that young.  Add up all seventeen likeliest new Senators, and they average a little below 52.

So: in the seventeen vacated seats, if the current chalk wins, the average age will drop from 68 to 52.  That really is a stunning development, and it will be enough to break the string of record old Senates.  I mean, think about it: if all seventeen winners serve two full terms, they'll still be younger than the group they are replacing were back in January 2009. 

What of the incumbents (that is, full-term incumbents) in trouble?  I count eight seats in that category.  One, in Arkansas, is a very likely turnover, with Lincoln (b. 1960) almost certainly about to be beat by Boozman (b. 1950).  Two incumbent Republicans do have somewhat competitive races, but Burr (55) and Vitter (49) are expected at this point to defeat Marshall (65) and Melancon (63).  The other five seats, in Nevada, California, Wisconsin, Washington, and Alaska, all appear potentially competitive, in one way or another.  This is a bit trickier...the eight incumbents in these seats average 58 years old, while the favorites, including incumbents who are favorites, are 57 years old.  By the way, I'm counting Joe Miller as the favorite in Alaska, pending any polling.  So, in those eight seats, we actually don't get much change - if the favorites win the eight seats will be a bit younger than if just the incumbents win, but they'll actually be a bit older than these incumbents were in January 2009.

I'm not going to try to run an overall average, because there's still plenty of uncertainty about what will happen.  Instead, what you want to know is where the most important general elections will be for those who care about how old the Senate is.  I'm going to rank them by a combination of age gap and closeness, and here are your top five:

5.  Nevada: Angle (b.1949) vs. Reid (b. 1939)

4.  Florida: Rubio (b. 1971) vs. Christ (b. 1956) vs. Meek (b. 1966). 

3. California: Fiorina (b. 1954) vs. Boxer (b. 1940).

2.  New Hampshire: Ayotte (b. 1968) vs. Hodes (b. 1951). 

1. Illinois: Giannoulias (b. 1976) vs. Kirk (b. 1959).  Close race, big gap, actual young candidate...easy choice for the top spot.

By the way, if Congressional demographics interest you -- and if you're reading to the bottom here, well, that answers that question -- I recommend the highly-praised reporter and occasionally-praised brother David S. Bernstein's end-of-primary-season look at the Republican women of 2010, which turns out to be a much smaller group than you might think.  Oh, and a data note: I estimated Ken Buck's age from his college graduation; he apparently keeps it close to the vest.  At least, when I tweeted the question, it was retweeted by the folks at the Denver Post, so they don't seem to know, either.  The other candidate without a web-accessible age is Alaska Democrat Scott McAdams; I have no idea at all how old he is, but I'm assuming he starts as the longshot, anyway.  Gotta love those three-way races, though: bizarre things can happen.

Were Old Senates Better?

Here's Tom Schaller over at FiveThirtyEight:

Alabama’s John Sparkman; Arizona’s Barry Goldwater and Carl Hayden; Arkansas’ J. William Fulbright; Connecticut’s Abe Ribicoff and Thomas Dodd; Georgia’s Richard Russell; Idaho’s Frank F. Church; Illinois’ Everett Dirksen; Indiana’s Birch Bayh; Louisiana’s Russell Long; Maine’s Edmund Muskie and Margaret Chase Smith; Minnesota’s Hubert Humphrey and Eugene McCarthy (and later, Walter Mondale, who filled Humphrey’s seat at the end of that Congress); Mississippi’s John Stennis; Montana’s Michael J. Mansfield; Nebraska’s Roman Hruska; New York’s Jacob Javits; North Carolina’s Sam Ervin; Rhode Island’s Claiborne Pell; South Carolina’s Strom Thurmond; South Dakota’s George McGovern; Tennessee’s Al Gore Sr. and Estes Kefauver; Texas’ Ralph Yarborough and John Tower; Virginia’s Harry Byrd; Washington’s Scoop Jackson; West Virginia’s Robert Byrd; and Wisconsin’s William Proxmire.

Wow.

Really? Humphrey, Fulbright, and Kennedy were certainly Senators who wound up as, well, in baseball they'd be inner circle Hall of Famers. Schaller makes much of the presidential and VP nominees here (he lists Sparkman, Goldwater, Humphrey, McGovern, Thurmond, H. Byrd, and should add Muskie to that list) but that hardly seems like an impressive crop to me. Let's see...1963 to 2009; I'll try 1986, halfway there. The 99th Senate included Goldwater, Biden, Quayle, Dole, Bentsen, Gore, and Kerry, plus Strom is still there, and also Eagleton. That's a much more impressive group of national nominees, I'd say -- it's three actual VPs, plus three real presidential nominations. 1963 had Gene McCarthy, who had a more important failed presidential campaign than 1986er Gary Hart, but then again 1986 had authentic American hero John Glenn. For Senate leadership, Dirksen, Mansfield and Byrd aren't nearly as impressive as Dole, Mitchell, McConnell, and Byrd again. Who else is there in 1986? Bill Bradley, Pete Dominici, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Jesse Helms, Sam Nunn, and Phil Gramm are all notables. If Dodd '63 was notable for being a father, then Dodd '86 is notable for being a son. Pell, Long and Proxmire are still Senators in 1986. There are by my count twenty-three past or future presidential candidates -- that's right, over a fifth of the 99th Senate ran for president.

I know some people would argue that any Senate with Hubert Humphrey will rank higher in terms of talent than any Senate without him, and that's a fair point, but beyond that I'm not seeing big differences. Of course, it's very hard to assess more recent Congresses, because we don't know yet whether Amy Klobuchar, Sherrod Brown, John Thune and Ben Cardin will wind up stars or forgotten, but I suspect that the 110th Senate (2006-2007) will wind up stacking up just fine in terms of star power, since Ted Kennedy's colleagues that time included Joe Biden, John McCain, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama.

The Senate: Really Old, Staying That Way

I just watched a quick little tribute on the Senate floor to Dan Inouye, who apparently passed Ted Kennedy today to become the third longest serving Senator, behind Strom Thurmand and Robert Byrd. You'll notice that three of these served in the current Senate. In fact, aging Senators is a big trend over the last several electoral cycles. CRS reports that "the average age of Senators at the beginning of the 111th Congress was 63.1 years," and that's a full three years older than the beginning of the 109th Congress, which was the oldest Senate ever and the first to break 60 (see below for data details).

Is there any chance for the Senate to start getting younger?

I'll start with the post-election changes, with current ages:

IL Obama (48) -> Burris (72)
DE Biden (66) -> Kaufman (70)
NY Clinton (61) -> Gillibrand (42)
CO Salazar (54) -> Bennet (44)
FL Martinez (62) -> LeMieux (40)
MA Kennedy (77) -> Kirk (71)

Adding that up, that's a decrease of a total of 29 years. Unfortunately, the other 94 Senators will have, over the course of the year and assuming no other changes, aged by an aggregate of 94 years, and all 100 will, if there are no further changes, age another year before the Congress ends. However, there is one certain change in the works, with Kirk (71) to be replaced soon. The frontrunner, Martha Coakley, is 56.

How about the prospects for the 112th Senate?

Here are the retirements so far, again with current age:
Burris (72)
Kaufman (70)
LeMieux (40)
Brownback (53)
Bunning (77)
Bond (60)
Gregg (52)
Voinovich (73)
Hutchison (66; she is supposedly retiring early, but we'll see)

This is not good news at all for those who want a less aged Senate. The average age of the retiring Senators is only 62.6, just barely older than the Senate as a whole. Meanwhile, Senators Leahy, Inouye, Mikulski, McCain, Shelby, and Bennett (UT), all well over the Senate average, appear to be shoe-ins for re-elections to six more years (most of this group will be over 80 by January 2017).

I'm strongly against term limits, and I think that experience is a good thing in Congress...but I would like to see a lot more Senators in their 30s and 40s, and a lot fewer over 75.



Notes: I don't have a copy of Vital Statistics on Congress at hand, but I don't know that they have data on Senator age, and on line versions of CRS reports only seem to go back to the 107th Congress. CRS's reports sometimes say that the then-current Senate is the oldest ever, but they also sometimes say it's the among the oldest ever, or the oldest in at least X years, or the oldest since they start having data (early 20th century), so it's a bit confusing. Also, it wasn't clear whether Al Franken, who was 57 in January and 58 when he took office, was included in the CRS calculation (Norm Coleman, who is almost two years older than Franken, was not included; different parts of the report refer to either 99 or 100 Senators, so I don't know which was used in the age calculation). The average age sentence in the CRS report talks about the beginning of the Senate, which would include Biden, Clinton, and Salazar (and Martinez and Kennedy) but leave Illinois vacant; again, I don't know what they chose to do, and I'm not energetic enough to run the numbers myself).

Also, all the numbers I ran just used whole-number age today (I ignored, for example, that two of the Senators mentioned have birthdays tomorrow, October 23). I have no idea how CRS calculated their score.