Here's the plain math: 537 members of Congress right now, and every single party breakdown lands in roughly the same place. Republicans average 59. Democrats average 60. Independents average 69. None of these numbers is young. That's the story before you even get to the details, and it's why we built a whole site around tracking this stuff instead of letting it fade into the background noise of Washington coverage. Age isn't a talking point here. It's a fact about the institution, and it applies to every party sitting in it.
Let's go party by party, plainly, no spin.
Republicans: 274 members. Average age 59. Of those, 91 are 65 or older, and 7 have crossed into their 80s.
Democrats: 260 members. Average age 60. Of those, 99 are 65 or older, and 18 have crossed into their 80s.
Independents: just 3 members total, so the numbers move fast with small changes. Average age 69. Two of the three are 65 or older, and two of the three are 80 or older.
Add it up and you get a Congress where a third-plus of the membership in both major parties is old enough to be collecting Social Security while still writing the rules for it. Democrats have more members past 80 in raw numbers, 18 versus 7. Republicans have a slightly larger caucus overall, 274 versus 260. Independents are too small a group to draw sweeping conclusions from, but their numbers skew older than either major party, driven by just three people.
None of this tells you which party is 'worse.' It tells you that the aging pattern in Congress isn't a partisan quirk. It's structural. It shows up on both sides of the aisle, in similar proportions, year after year. Whatever your politics, you're looking at the same basic shape: a chamber tilted toward its older members, no matter which letter follows their name.
This is the part we actually care about: how you use this. If you came here assuming one party was clearly the 'old' party and the other was clearly the 'young' one, the numbers don't back that up. Average ages sit one year apart, 59 versus 60. The 65+ numbers are close, 91 versus 99, out of caucuses of similar size. That's not a wide gap. It's two parties experiencing the same gradual graying of the institution.
Where the real difference shows up is at the very top of the age range. Eighteen Democrats have passed 80, compared to 7 Republicans. That's a meaningful gap in the oldest bracket, even while the averages stay close. If you're using Too Damn Old to size up your own member of Congress, don't just look at their party's average. Look at where they individually sit against these numbers, and look specifically at whether they're in that 65+ or 80+ bracket, because that's where the real variation between individuals lives, not necessarily between parties as a whole.
The bigger point: age in Congress isn't a red or blue phenomenon. It's a Congress-wide one. Seats are sticky. Incumbents win re-election at extremely high rates in both parties. Once someone is entrenched, there's little structural pressure pushing them out, regardless of what letter is next to their name. That's the pattern worth watching, more than any single party's average. It's also why we built this site to track individuals, not just party totals. A caucus average can hide a lot. It can make a party with a handful of members in their 80s and a bunch of much younger members look statistically similar to a party with a more even age spread. Averages flatten stories. Individual numbers tell you the truth about who's actually representing you, and how old they actually are, right now.
The math here is straightforward and we keep it that way on purpose. We pull the current, official membership of Congress, sort every sitting member by party, birthdate, and chamber, and calculate ages using today's date against each member's date of birth. Averages are simple means within each party group. The 65+ and 80+ counts are headcounts of members whose current age crosses those thresholds, recalculated continuously as birthdays happen and as membership changes through elections, resignations, or appointments. Independents are counted as their own category rather than folded into either major party, which is why that group's numbers can shift more dramatically with small changes since it's only 3 people total.
These numbers update as Congress changes, so the snapshot you're reading today reflects the current sitting membership, not a static historical record. If you want the full detail on how we source birthdates, define chambers, and handle edge cases like special elections or party switches, the complete breakdown lives at toodamnold.com/data. It's worth a look if you want to see exactly how the sausage gets made before you start citing these numbers yourself.