As Michael Barone explains in a new Washington Examiner article, congressional Democrats are older than their Republican counterparts:
The average age of Republican House members in the new Congress convening today is 54.9, younger than the Republicans’ average age in the previous Congress, 56.5. But the average age of House Democrats has risen, from 58 to 60.2. That can be explained partly by the high turnover in the 2010 election. Many younger Democrats, first elected in 2006 or 2008, fell by the wayside. The old bulls from 65 percent-plus Democratic districts survived. Meanwhile, many young Republican challengers won.
But the results are historically anomalous. Going back to the Congress elected in 1950, there has never been more than a 2.8-year difference in the average age of House Republicans and House Democrats. The difference in this Congress is 5.3 years, almost double that.
The picture is similar on the Senate side of the Capitol, where the average age of Republicans is 61.4 and the average age of Democrats is 63.1. That’s as wide a margin as in any Senate since the one produced by the election of 1982.
Democrats like to think of themselves as the young party, the party of new ideas. And in 2010 they remained the choice of the youngest voters, though by only half the margin in 2008.
But when you look at the top Democrats in the House, you don’t see young faces. The ages of the ranking Democrats on the Appropriations, Ways and Means, Education, Energy and Commerce, Financial Services, Foreign Affairs, and Judiciary committees are 70, 79, 65, 71, 70, 69 and 81. The three party leaders are 70, 71 and 70.
