Hey there trivia fans. Quick: what is the median seniority of members of the United States House of Representatives? That would be January 3, 2003.
Only 164 of the 434 members have more than five terms of service under their belts. Only 17 current members were initialy elected in the 1970’s and only 37 were initially elected in the 1980’s. Of these 54 members, a half dozen have interruptions in their lengths of service for various reasons.
Whether this is a good or a bad thing is a question I leave up to you.
So when they talk about the 93% incumbency rate or whatever it is, they’re talking about a different 7% every year? Or are these numbers more or less representative of not only the oughts, but the 90’s and the 80’s?
Evidence indicates that the aughts have seen a much higher amount of turnover than in any decade any of us are going to remember.
According to opensecrets, every House election from 1984 ’til 2010 had over a 90% reelection rate except for ’92, ’94, and ’10.
(http://www.opensecrets.org/bigpicture/reelect.php)
In other words, I’d be interested to know what was the average in the previous Congress before the 2010 elections.
That may be correct. Nevertheless, seniority seems quite low compared to what that statistic would lead us to believe. Granted that seniority is not exactly equal to time-in-service for the handful of members whose service has been non-sequential.
Well, I’m guessing a decent bunch of seniority went away when a whole bunch of old Southern Democrats lost or retired in 1992 or 1994. Throw in a bunch of older Blue Dog’s and other moderate Democrats in McCain districts that got eliminated in 2010 and there ya’ go. At least, in theory. 🙂
Re-election rates are improved by the fact that those that can read the tea leaves often jump out before they are pushed.
This, re-election rates don’t count the folks who don’t run again, either retirement, resignation or deciding to do something else.
The House does seem to be a decent distribution of experience and adequate turnover. It’s the Senate where the median person has been there since Clinton was elected the first time, (which is not too bad) and was born when Hitler’s power was still ascendant (which is)