Two-thirds of Americans want age limits for politicians, Supreme Court
As the 2024 presidential election looks more and more like a potential 2020 redux, a majority of Americans want age limits on federal politicians, according to a new poll.
Approximately two-thirds of Americans polled want to see an age limit on running for president or for both houses of Congress. Roughly the same amount wanted to see a mandatory retirement age for Supreme Court justices. Age limits were slightly more popular with Democrats than Republican voters, especially in the case of the Supreme Court. While 67% of Americans overall want to set an age limit on the Court, 77% of Democrats agreed compared to 61% of Republicans.
When it came to running to the House and Senate, 68% overall agreed there should be an age limit, with Democrats and Republicans tied at 71%. And for president, 66% overall wanted a limit, which broke down to 72% of Democrats and 64% of Republicans.
The poll was conducted earlier this month by the Associated Press and the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. It had a sample size of 1,165 adults with a margin of error of 3.8%. Many of the questions focused on President Joe Biden's age, with 77% of Americans saying he's is too old for a second term, compared to only 51% who apply the same label to former President Donald Trump, even though he's just three years younger.
The average age of a president at their inauguration is 55. Biden is the oldest person elected president, a record previously broken by Trump in 2016. As for the House, the average age is just under 58, which is down a year from the previous Congress, according to the Pew Research Center. The Senate, however, has gotten older—the average senator is 65.3 years old, up by about six months from the last Congress.
While the federal Supreme Court has no age limit, that's not the case for most state courts. Only 16 states don't set a limit on their judges. Another 17 set the limit at 70, according to Ballotpedia. Other states have limits between 72-75, and Vermont has the highest limit at 90 years old. Two states don't have a hard age limit, but judges who seek reelection or refuse to retire after a certain age—73 in North Dakota; 70 in Arkansas—lose retirement benefits.
