Congress Is Turning Over Faster Than It Is Getting Younger

By George Quinn, Adil Khan, Bushra Imran, & Aroush Ahmad

  • This post launches the Young Elected Leaders Project Blog, where we will follow the 2026 midterm elections through the lens of age and generational representation.

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Two records are converging on the 2026 midterms, and they describe the largest turnover in congressional membership in a generation.

The first is departures. According to Ballotpedia, 70 members of Congress including 11 senators and 59 representatives are not running for re-election this year. That is the most since at least 2000, and 32 percent more than the 53 who stood down in 2024.

The second is defeat. Nine House incumbents have lost primaries this cycle, along with two sitting senators, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and John Cornyn of Texas (The Hill). Outside of a national redistricting year, that is the highest rate of incumbent primary losses since 1970.

Turnover on this scale is real, and it is unusual. However turnover is not the same thing as generational change, and the distinction matters enormously for anyone tracking who actually ends up in Congress.

The Baseline: What Youth Representation Looks Like in The Congress

The Young Elected Leaders Project defines a Young Elected Leader (YEL) as an officeholder who was age 35 or younger on Election Day. By that measure, the 119th Congress is a striking outlier relative to the country it represents.

Twelve members of the U.S. House, six Democrats and six Republicans, qualified as YELs following the 2024 election. In a chamber of 435 seats, that is under three percent. The average representative was 57.31 years old. Nearly two-thirds of the House belongs to Generation X or the Baby Boom generation, while Millennials and Gen Z together account for roughly one-third. Exactly one member of the House is a Gen Zer: Maxwell Frost of Florida, born in 1997.

The Senate is older still, and starker. Its average member is 63.71 years old, and no sitting senator is 35 or younger. Only two are under 40: Jon Ossoff (D-GA), 37, and Tim Sheehy (R-MT), 38.

Figure 1. Young Elected Leaders in the 119th U.S. House of Representatives

Worth noting: youth representation in the House is almost perfectly balanced by party six and six. Whatever else divides the parties, neither has a monopoly on young members and neither has many.

Why “record retirements” Overstates the Case

While many have recorded the record 70 congressional retirements as a good sign of generational change. The underlying data tell a more complex story.

Of the 57 House incumbents who filed to leave their seats, only 29 are retiring from public office altogether. Sixteen are running for the U.S. Senate. Eleven are running for governor. One is running for state attorney general. In other words, a majority of these departures are not exits from politics at all, they are attempts at a new position.

This matters for two reasons.

First, it means the open House seats are genuinely open, which does lower one of the steepest barriers facing any first-time candidate: running against an incumbent. That is a real opportunity.

Second, and less encouragingly, it means a large share of this turnover simply relocates experienced officeholders into higher office rather than clearing the way for a new cohort. A 55-year-old House member who wins a Senate seat has not created generational change. Instead this member has created one open House seat and made the Senate marginally younger than its 63.71-year average, which is not a high bar.

Incumbents who have Lost Primary Challenges this Cycle are not Always Replaced with Younger Candidates

Seven House Democrats have lost primaries this year, five of them past retirement age, Axios reports. In a recent August primary Rep. John Larson of Connecticut, 78, lost by more than 20 points to former Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin, 47. Despite Larson holding his seat in congress since 1999. Reps. Diana DeGette, 69 (D-CO), Shri Thanedar, 71 (D-MI), and Adriano Espaillat, 71 (D-NY) each lost to younger challengers. Rep. Al Green, 78 (D-TX), was defeated by 38-year-old freshman Rep. Christian Menefee after mid-decade redistricting placed them in the same seat. Overall 2026 is the worst year for Democratic incumbents in primaries outside a redistricting year since 1970. An incumbent losing renomination is a very rare thing especially in congressional primaries. Typically in the modern electoral environment 6.5 incumbents lose renomination but in 2026 that number is 14.

Republican Incumbent losses have not followed the same pattern. While several Republican Incumbents have lost renomination this cycle, in many prominent cases like Thomas Massie – 55 in Kentucky’s 4th District. His replacement Ed Gallrein was older at age 68. Below are the 14 members of congress or the senate that have lost renomination. In total, 9 have been replaced by younger challengers while 5 were replaced by older challengers. Four out of the five races resulting in an older challenger were Republican held seats while only one was a Democratic held seat.

Congressional Incumbents who lost Renomination Nationwide

Ages are as of Election Day November 3rd 2026, Winner Age 35 or Under in Italics

Seat Incumbent (Age on
Election Day)		 Challenger (Age on
Election Day)		 Challenger
Younger then
Incumbent
1 Colorado – 1st U.S House (D) Diana DeGette – 69 Milat Krios – 29 Yes
2 Connecticut – 1st U.S House (D) John Larson – 78 Luke Bronin – 47 Yes
3 Florida – 7th U.S House (R) Cory Mills – 46 Ryan Elijah – 54 No
4 Kentucky – 4th U.S House (R) Thomas Massie – 55 Ed Gallrein – 68 No
5 Louisiana U.S Senate (R) Bill Cassidy – 68 Julia Letlow – 45 Yes
6 Michigan – 13th U.S House (D) Shri Thanedar – 71 Donavan McKinney – 34 Yes
7 New York – 10th U.S House (D) Dan Goldman – 50 Brad Lander – 57 No
8 New York – 13th U.S House (D) Adriano Espaillat – 71 Darializa Avila Chevalier – 32 Yes
9 Tennessee – 5th U.S House (R) Andy Ogles – 55 Charlie Hatcher – 68 No
10 Texas U.S Senate (R) John Cornyn – 74 Ken Paxton – 63 Yes
11 Texas – 2nd U.S House (R) Dan Crenshaw – 42 Steve Toth – 65 No
12 Texas – 9th U.S House (D) Al Green – 79 Christian Menefee – 38 Yes
13 Texas – 23rd U.S House (R) Tony Gonzales – 45* Brandon Herrera – 30 Yes
14 Texas – 33rd U.S House (D) Julie Johnson – 60 Colin Allred – 43 Yes

*TX-23rd the incumbent Rep. Tony Gonzales initially was slated to face Brandon Herrera in a runoff election but chose not to run allowing his challenger to win the nomination. This however still counts as an incumbent losing their primary given that Rep Gonzales did not attain 50% in the initial contest.

The retirement wave and the primary losses are also linked in ways the raw numbers obscure. Several older incumbents including Senator Mitch McConnell 84 (R-KY), and Representatives Jerry Nadler, 79 (D-NY), Steve Cohen, 77 (D-TN), and Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, 89 (D-DC), had publicly committed to running before stepping aside under pressure. Their departures are counted as retirements, despite clear questions about generational representation being a part of their campaigns. Politicians are indeed responding to recent polling that has shown the public’s desire for generational change.

The Catch: Generational Change is Arriving as Gen X

Consider who is actually winning. Bronin is 47, a member of Generation X, and 31 years younger than representative John Larson (D-CT), who he recently beat. Menefee, who is 38, and an older Millennial, recently defeated incumbent congressman Al Green, aged 79. Both of these high profile challengers are younger but comfortably above 35. While some under 35 candidates have beaten incumbents such as Melat Kiros 29, (D-CO) and Brandon Herrera 30, (R-TX). Across the nation it appears that members of Generation X or older Millennials are picking up the torch from older representatives.

This is the pattern to watch. The 2026 primaries are not replacing Boomers with Gen Z. They are replacing the Silent Generation and older Boomers with Gen X and older Millennials who have already had two or three decades of professional and political careers. That is a real change in the median age of Congress, however not growth in representation of leaders 35 and under.

The generational change picture is indeed much more complicated than at first glance. The twelve Young Elected Leaders elected in 2024 were born between 1988 and 1997. By Election Day 2026, roughly half of that cohort will have crossed the 35-year threshold, not because they lost, but because two years passed. This is why watching candidates is important because large congressional turnover is not a guarantee for a younger representative body. There is also a substantive argument worth taking seriously, and one of the sharpest findings in the Axios reporting. Challengers who ran primarily on generational change tended to underperform relative to those who paired age with a distinct policy agenda. Rep. Brad Sherman, 71 (D-CA), dispatched a well-funded 42-year-old challenger; Reps. Mike Thompson, 75 (D-CA) and Ed Case, 73 (D-HI) held on against younger opponents. In Massachusetts, Democratic voters in a recent senate primary renominated incumbent Ed Markey, 80 (D-MA) over congressman Seth Moulton, age 47. Voters, on this evidence, are not rewarding youth by itself. They are rewarding candidates who offer something specific, and youth alone is not a platform.

What we are Watching

The 2026 cycle is not finished. Contests involving dozens of open-seat general elections will not be decided until November.

But the questions this cycle raises are already clear, and they are the questions this blog will follow:

  • Do record open seats produce record numbers of young nominees, or do they mostly elevate experienced state legislators and local officials? Open seats are also the most expensive and most contested races, which historically advantages candidates with existing networks and fundraising bases.
  • Does the 35-and-under cohort grow, hold, or shrink once aging-out is accounted for?
  • Does generational turnover at the top translate downward, or does replacing an 78-year-old with a 47-year-old simply reset the clock for another two decades?
  • Are the two parties’ pipelines diverging? Democratic turnover is running explicitly on age. Republican turnover is running on ideological alignment. Those mechanisms may produce very different age profiles by 2028.

Record turnover is a necessary condition for generational change in Congress. It is not a sufficient one. Over the coming months we will track the candidates, the results, and the data, and report what the 2026 midterms actually deliver for the next generation of elected leaders. Furthermore we plan on providing age information for all major party general election candidates now that primaries are complete nationwide.

The Young Elected Leaders Project is housed at the Center for Youth Political Participation at The Eagleton Institute of Politics, Rutgers University – New Brunswick. Congressional age and demographic data are drawn from the YELP Congressional Dashboard, current as of the 119th Congress. YELP applies the Pew Research Center’s generational definitions.

Sources