New Bill of Rights

Candidate category · Concept Strong; named age unpolled

Age limits for Congress

A maximum age for candidates for Congress drew 78% of Democrats and 83% of Republicans (Marist, 2026), but no poll has tested a named age by party; the judicial retirement age now sits in the Term Limits amendment.

Under consideration since 2026-08-06. A candidate is neither accepted nor rejected — it is waiting on evidence against the full-spectrum test. What we know, what we don't, and what would move it are below.

The proposal

The Constitution sets minimum ages for Congress and no maximum: a Representative must have “attained to the age of twenty five years,” a Senator “thirty years.”1 An age-limit amendment adds the missing ceiling. The variant this page treats is a candidacy bar — no person who has reached a stated age may be elected to the House or Senate, borrowing the Twenty-Second Amendment’s structure of regulating election rather than service. A presidential cap is polled often but is not this category as filed. The judicial half — a retirement age for judges — was accepted into our Term Limits amendment on 18 August 2026 as Section 3 of that draft, and is no longer a candidate.2

A term limit is a count; an age cap is a date. A count can be made prospective at no cost: start the clock at ratification and no sitting member is displaced. A date cannot. Any cap set low enough to have a practical effect is, on its effective date, a list of sitting officeholders.

The evidence

The newest and best-documented reading asked about “setting a maximum age limit for candidates to be eligible to run for the United States House of Representatives and Senate”: 80% supported it — 83% of Republicans, 78% of Democrats, 79% of independents. The question named no age (NPR/PBS News/Marist, 2026).3

Democrats: 78% 78% Dem Republicans: 83% 83% Rep Independents: 79% 79% Ind bipartisan floor · 78% (Democrats)
Maximum age limit for candidates to run for the U.S. House and Senate — NPR/PBS News/Marist, 2026

Three earlier independent pollsters place the floor in the same band. Maximum age limits for federal elected officials: 79% — 82% of Republicans, 76% of Democrats (Pew Research Center, 2023).4 The same idea worded as removal, “not permitted to hold office any longer”: 77% — 79% of Republicans, 76% of Democrats (CBS News/YouGov, 2023).5 Upper age limits for president, senators and House members, in the one survey that put the counter-argument in the same sample: 67% — 72% of Republicans, 69% of Democrats (Reuters/Ipsos, 2022).6

No poll has asked favor or oppose on a named age with a party breakdown. The two surveys that asked for a number asked only supporters, and found no majority for any age: 45% chose 70 — 52% of Republicans, 45% of Democrats (CBS News/YouGov, 2023).5 The nearest party-broken reading on a number is a proxy from the presidential variant, which this category does not include: 54% would set a presidential maximum at 79 or younger — 34% of Republicans, 75% of Democrats (YouGov, 2025).7 The judicial evidence is set out on the Term Limits amendment page.

Where it stands

The bipartisan floor is 78% (Democrats), on a maximum age limit for candidates for the House and Senate (NPR/PBS News/Marist, 2026) — Strong, the highest floor of any candidate category.3

Cleared: the high-topline, low-floor failure mode — the party gap runs five to six points across three pollsters. Abuse versus remedy — 78% agree officials over 75 raise concerns about ability to perform the job (no party breakdown published for that item), and 77% back the remedy in the same sample, 79% of Republicans and 76% of Democrats (CBS News/YouGov, 2023).5 Why an amendment — congressional qualifications cannot be added by Congress or by a state; the Supreme Court has held that Article I limits each House to the qualifications “expressly prescribed in the Constitution,”8 and that any change “must come … through the Amendment procedures set forth in Article V.”9 Symmetry — a date applies identically to every officeholder of both parties; the only asymmetry is temporal, borne by whichever party’s officeholders are older on the effective date. Staleness — the newest fieldwork is the strongest.

At risk or open: depth. Every party breakdown in the record is on the concept, and the concept is not the amendment — an amendment must state an age or delegate one, and at that point the consensus stops being measurable. Regime coding, shown in the adjacent presidential variant: Republicans were the most supportive group in 2022–23 and the least in 2025, 64% to Democrats’ 88% (YouGov, 2025).7 The congressional item has been steadier — 79% of Republicans and 76% of Democrats in 2023, 83% and 78% in 2026, through a change of administration — but a cap’s bite depends on who is currently old. The existential-problem test is open and is the binding constraint: life tenure removes the electoral remedy for judges; for Congress, voters hold that remedy every two or six years, and the amendment must argue that voters’ own choices are the problem.10

Framings we tested

Every framing of the concept clears the bar, including the formats designed to depress it: from 57% of Democrats and 64% of Republicans with a prominent “not sure” option (YouGov, 2022) — the one Moderate reading11 — through 69% of Democrats and 72% of Republicans with the experience counter-argument in the field (Reuters/Ipsos, 2022), to 78% of Democrats and 83% of Republicans on House and Senate candidates (Marist, 2026). Toplines are wording-elastic by roughly twenty points, but no format drops the floor below Strong.

No framing with a number in it clears. “The maximum age should be 70” is the choice of 45% of supporters — 52% of Republicans, 45% of Democrats (CBS News/YouGov, 2023) — and the presidential proxy at 79 or younger draws 34% of Republicans and 75% of Democrats (YouGov, 2025), a 41-point gap. The gap is not between an abuse framing and a remedy framing; it is between the principle and the parameter, and the parameter is the part that has to be written.

What would move it

Moving it in: one survey by an independent pollster with published party crosstabs, asking a forward-looking favor-or-oppose on the operative clause with the number in it — “no person who has reached the age of 75 may be elected to the House or Senate,” applying to every future candidate of both parties, with no one now in office removed before the end of their term — clearing 60% in both parties, repeated at 70 and 80, with the strongest counter-argument (“voters should be free to elect anyone they judge capable, regardless of age”) in the same sample. A cross-party roll call, or a state measure imposing rather than loosening a cap, would also count. No roll call exists to read: an amendment filed in the 118th Congress, barring election to federal office of anyone who would be 75 or older during the term, drew zero cosponsors, died in committee, and had not been reintroduced as of August 2026.12

Moving it out: if the named-age wording drops either party below 45%, the category fails the depth test — Strong in the abstract, collapsing when the cost is specified. If leader age is judged a preference about who governs rather than a threat to the country’s future, it fails the existential-problem test whatever its polling.

Sources

  1. A Representative must have “attained to the age of twenty five years” and a Senator “thirty years” — U.S. Constitution, Article I, Cornell LII; judges “shall hold their offices during good behaviour” — Article III, Cornell LII. ↩

  2. Term Limits, Section 3, adopted 18 August 2026: “No person shall exercise the judicial power of the United States after the end of the calendar year in which they attain the age of seventy-five years, or such earlier age as Congress shall by law provide for judges other than Justices of the Supreme Court. This section shall not apply to any Justice or judge holding office at the time of its ratification.” The congressional half was not folded — Term Limits amendment. ↩

  3. Maximum age limit for candidates to run for the U.S. House and Senate: 80% support / 20% oppose — 83% R / 78% D / 79% I; 47% “strongly support” (52% R / 47% D); no age named; n=1,322 adults, April 27–30, 2026, ±3.1 — NPR/PBS News/Marist national tables; NPR write-up. ↩ ↩2

  4. Maximum age limits for federal elected officials: 79% — 82% R / 76% D; congressional term limits in the same battery: 87% (90% R / 86% D); fieldwork July 10–16, 2023 — Pew Research Center; same figures in Pew’s July 2026 round-up. ↩

  5. Maximum age limits for elected officials, “after they reach a certain age, they are not permitted to hold office any longer”: 77% yes — 79% R / 76% D / 77% I; preferred limit among supporters: 45% age 70 (52% R / 45% D), 22% age 60, 18% age 80, 8% age 50; 78% agree officials over 75 “raise concerns about ability to perform their job,” 68% that they “have helpful experience”; n=2,329 adults, September 5–8, 2023 — CBS News/YouGov topline and crosstabs. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  6. Upper age limits for president, senators and House members: 67% — 72% R / 69% D; 61% agree older leaders “often have valuable experience” and 55% say those in good health should not be barred by age; n=1,003, November 9–10, 2022 — Reuters/Ipsos. ↩

  7. Maximum age to serve as president: 75% — 64% R / 88% D / 73% I; 54% would set it at 79 or younger — 34% R / 75% D / 53% I; Republicans the most supportive group in 2022–23 and the least in 2025; n=1,140 adult citizens, March 17–19, 2025 — YouGov. ↩ ↩2

  8. Article I §5 limits each House to judging the qualifications “expressly prescribed in the Constitution” — Powell v. McCormack, 395 U.S. 486 (1969), Cornell LII. ↩

  9. “The Constitution prohibits States from imposing congressional qualifications additional to those specifically enumerated in its text”; any change “must come not by legislation adopted either by Congress or by an individual State, but rather … through the Amendment procedures set forth in Article V” (5–4) — U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton, 514 U.S. 779 (1995), Cornell LII. ↩

  10. The administrability case for an age limit (“all you need is a birth certificate and a calculator”) against the absence of any baseline for individual variation in capacity — Harvard Gazette, October 10, 2025. ↩

  11. Maximum age limit for elected officials: 58% support / 21% oppose — 64% R / 57% D / 60% I, remainder unsure; preferred cap among supporters: 39% age 70, 24% age 60, 23% age 80; n=27,797 adults, January 14–18, 2022 — YouGov. ↩

  12. H.J.Res. 87 (118th Congress), introduced September 5, 2023, proposed an amendment prohibiting the election as President, Vice President, Senator, or Representative “of a person who, during their term, will be 75 years of age or older”; zero cosponsors, referred to House Judiciary, no further action, and no 119th Congress reintroduction found as of August 18, 2026 — Congress.gov. ↩

← All candidates