60 Years of Generational Representation in the U.S. Congress [OC]

13 comments

1. Source: [voteview.com](http://voteview.com), Tools: Python and Plotly

2. If you’re in your 40s, your parents’ generation is still running the country

3. Really fucked up the lack of GenZ representation in the 80s 

   (This data would be better if different generations appeared on the chat the year the first of them came to age for congressional seats)

4. Shouldn’t the purple line begin in 97? And the red line in 81? I get they’re at zero, but it’s a weird choice when this is about representation. Unconsciously implies that gen z has been underrepresented since 65.

5. Can you contrast this by showing the percentage of the voting population represented by each generation over time.

6. Gen Xers will be just as clung to power as their baby boomer counterparts. The death of the boomers will not suddenly solve everything.

7. Get the silent gen out along with the boomers

8. The 20 year span for the silent and baby boomer generations vs. 15 year span for the other generations distorts the data. It gives the appearance of those earlier generations having even more of an over representation than they already have.

   I’d rather see a graph of house member age, animated to show how it has shifted over time.

9. Hate to say it, but Gen X has some of the buttheads in Congress. I love you guys, but there’s something bad happening in Washington and it isn’t all at the top.

10. This is a good example of why artificially categorizing (binning) data is frowned upon. If it just plotted *Year of Birth* instead of artificial *Generation* categories, it would more fairly represent the data.

11. that the gap between generations is actually shrinking is encouraging. particularly X to Millennials.

12. Just realized is the silent generation the ones that ruined this country???

13. The country started going to hell right about the time Boomers surpassed the Silent Generation.

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