Do Voters Care About the Age of Their Elected Representatives?

• In Event: Candidates' Personal Characteristics and Their Performance

Abstract

Mitch McConnell, Joe Biden, and Nancy Pelosi have a least one thing in common besides for a career in politics: they are all over age 75. Biden takes the title as the oldest president in history, and Pelosi is the oldest to serve as Speaker of the House. To what degree is age of a politician seen as a positive or negative attribute among voters in the electorate? An older politician may be seen positively as more experienced and better connected – or perceived negatively as out of touch or not able to take on the challenges of the job. Using an experiment included in the 2020 CES, we explore how people evaluate younger versus older politicians, conditional on respondent age. We also consider whether a politician’s age serves as an ideological cue, given that ideological fractionalization within both the GOP and the Democratic Party is often driven by younger politicians.

We then consider the effects of candidate age on voter empowerment, using evidence from CCES surveys to consider whether the presence of younger candidates serves to mobilize interest and engagement especially among younger voters, who often fail to find descriptive representation by age among elected officials. Our research speaks to the importance of the demographic composition of Congress, and the degree to which age is a salient attribute of elected officials in the minds of the electorate.

Authors

• Damon Charles Roberts, University of Colorado Boulder

• Jennifer Wolak, Michigan State University