Why America Has the World's Oldest Politicians

How our creaky electoral system created the most advanced gerontocracy on earth.

You may have noticed: American politicians are really old. You, and everyone else who follows American politics. 

But you may not know that American politicians are exceptionally old compared to other democracies. Congratulations, USA: we are the world's most advanced gerontocracy. American exceptionalism, indeed.

Consider the chart above. 40 percent of representatives are over 60, almost twice as much as the next most gerontocratic OECD country. America has topped the gerontocratic rankings since at least 2000.¹

But why? Why are politicians in the United States so much older than in other democracies?

The chart above comes from a new report, just out from Protect Democracy and New America called The Age Divide: How America’s electoral system reinforces the gerontocracy and inhibits young people’s full participation in democracy. The report is by my colleagues Oscar Pocasangre (at New America) and Dustin Wahl (Executive Director of Fix Our House, a campaign for proportional representation that I co-founded).

And, well, there is the explanation. Right there in the subtitle. It’s the electoral system. Again.

The data are pretty clear. As the report shows (and other studies confirm), countries with proportional systems have significantly higher youth representation than winner-take-all systems. 

And the United States primary system — already the most open in the world by far (even in so-called “closed” primaries) — creates distinctly weak political parties that do not invest in young talent.

How the US electoral system makes it super-hard for younger candidates

Imagine you want to run for the U.S. House of Representatives. I don’t know who you are, or where you live. But I will guess you are in a safe district. This is a safe guess — More than 90 percent of current congressional districts are safe for one party. 

And incumbents who run in these seats usually stick around for a long time. Sure, you could try to “primary” an incumbent. But very few primary challenges succeed. Incumbents are very effective at boxing out challengers. The few prominent examples of incumbents getting “primaried” are mostly exceptions.

But every now and then, a safe seat for your party does come open. 

Now is your chance. Can you win it? Or, really: can you win your party’s primary election? 

Well, that depends… 

Can you raise competitive money? Primary election donors skew older.. 

Can you mobilize voters? Primary electorates are older than general election ²

In safe seats, party leaders stay out, leaving name recognition as the dominant factor — a massive advantage for established, older politicians. Conversations about age and health are tricky. Just ask Democrats who tried to confront the Biden problem in the first half of 2024.

In the few competitive or swing districts (again, less than 10 percent of all seats, at most 40 or so — depending on the year — perhaps even fewer this year), incumbents rarely last as long. So there are more opportunities for challengers.

But in a competitive district, national party leaders sometimes get involved, directing donors and primary voters to support the most “electable” candidate. And who is “electable”? 

To a lot of party insiders In 2025 America, "electable" still translates primarily to middle-aged white males. In an electorate that tilts older, youth registers as electoral liability rather than asset. 

Yes, there are exceptions. But the overall trends are clear. The median age of a first-term House member is 50.2 years; for first-term Senators, it's 55.0 years. The average primary candidate is in mid-life crisis territory, just over 50.

Think of it this way: Running for national office in America resembles waiting along a single-track railway line for a single-car train to come along. Sometimes decades pass. No train comes.

The obviously abandoned ticket booth has a sign: "Closed Until Incumbent Retires." 

When it finally opens, passengers over 50 with donor connections get access to a special ticket window for priority boarding. Only one passenger can get on per stop, however. 

At this point, you might be thinking, well why not term limits? Or perhaps age limits? 

I’ve long been skeptical of term limits (because I do value experience in Congress), but I’ve come around to thinking maybe 12 terms in the House (24 years) and four terms in the Senate (also 24 years) might be reasonable.  I can see a stronger case for age limits (why not mandatory retirement from public office at the patriotic age of 76?). 

But, as the report shows, even new members of Congress are not particularly young. And on average, members of Congress are serving shorter terms today than in previous decades! There’s a bigger problem that term limits or age limits can’t solve.

 

Why proportional systems cultivate younger leaders

Proportional representation changes these dynamics. Under list proportional systems — the most common form worldwide — parties present diverse candidate slates to voters. Voters can choose their preferred party, and choose among the candidates on the list. All votes for each party are added up across party candidates. And parties get awarded seats based on the total share of the vote they get. So if candidates for Party A get 40% of the vote in a 5-member district, Party A sends two representatives to Congress. 

When parties can field only one candidate per district, "electability" defaults to older males. When they can present balanced tickets, younger candidates become strategic assets for appealing to younger voters. All votes count for the party, making demographic diversity a competitive advantage rather than a risk.

As Pocasangre and Wahl write in the report: "The inclusion of younger candidates — who generally do not have as extensive networks, experience, or financial and political capital as older politicians — also does not carry as much risk for parties as it does in winner-take-all systems since parties can still win seats even if the younger candidate does not perform as well as others."

Proportional systems also eliminate American-style primaries. Interestingly, we're the only democracy where public primaries play a role in parties’ candidate selection.³

Perhaps counter-intuitively, the more people who pick candidates, the more generic those candidates become. Mass primaries also make candidates dependent on donors instead of parties – especially early donors. Put another way: The larger the “selectorate” (the political science-y term for the group that selects candidates), the more money and fame matter.

By contrast, fewer party leaders picking candidates creates more diversity, at least in proportional systems. This is because party leaders are best able to balance out a slate of candidates. 

Another reason proportional systems have better youth representation is that in proportional systems, new parties can form and win seats. Young voters frustrated with existing options can form parties that win seats. Winner-take-all relegates new parties to fringe status. Or, more likely, no status at all!

The stakes: an increasingly alienated generation

Even in high-turnout elections, fewer than half of eligible Americans under 30 actually vote. Among OECD countries, America has the widest turnout gap between the youngest and oldest voters: Roughly 40 points between over 65 voters and under 30 voters (at least based on survey data from the 2010s)

Recent polling shows young voters "overwhelmingly believe that almost all politicians are corrupt and that the country will end up worse off than when they were born." Only 26 percent disagree with the fatalistic statement: "It doesn't matter who wins elections, nothing changes."

Distressingly, a recent Protect Democracy analysis classified roughly a third of young people as having "dismissive detachment" toward democracy — expressing low democratic support, greater openness to authoritarianism, and limited belief in their ability to create change. Another seven percent show "hostile dissatisfaction," making them "a powerful yet potentially volatile force, with heightened openness to political violence and extreme measures."

The democratic implications are serious. The less younger voters  see democracy representing them, the more unpredictable  they may become. Importantly, young voters in America are not giving up on democracy – they would just like it to work a whole lot better. But nothing radicalizes like repeated frustration and thwarted hopes. 

Obviously, age is just a number. Some people are super-agers. And experience matters in governance. But when our electoral system systematically excludes entire generations from meaningful participation, we’re courting a generational legitimacy crisis. 

Still curious for more? I talked to the report’s authors, my colleagues Oscar Pocasangre (at New America) and Dustin Wahl (Executive Director of Fix Our House, a campaign for proportional representation that I co-founded) on the podcast I co-host, Politics in Question. We had a great conversation, which you should definitely listen to.

And of course, you should read the full report.

 

1. The data come from the Worldwide Age Representation in Parliaments Dataset: https://www.warpdataset.com/

2. It is a persistent myth that primary electorates are more ideologically extreme. But that’s for another post, perhaps. In the meantime, if you want to understand why “primary reform” is a reform dead end, you should read Robert Boatright’s magisterial book on primary reform: https://www.amazon.com/Reform-Retrenchment-Century-Efforts-Elections/dp/0197774083. Or listen to my discussion with Rob on Politics in Question: https://www.politicsinquestion.com/episodes/why-do-americans-use-primary-elections-to-select-candidates-for-office?rq=boatright. Or read my big deep dive on primary reform from 4 years ago, though know I’ve become even MORE skeptical about primary reform since: https://www.newamerica.org/political-reform/reports/what-we-know-about-congressional-primaries-and-congressional-primary-reform/

3. Though, as Oscar has pointed out to me, “technically, Argentina has public primaries but parties coordinate internally and only present one candidate, or their favorite candidate and an unknown one (so they end up being like a first round election of sorts)”