The United States is a gerontocracy


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Oct 27 2020 32 mins   1.9k
The average age of a member of Congress is 58, and the most influential lawmakers are much older. No matter who wins the election next week, the White House will be occupied by the oldest sitting U.S. president. There’s a word for “rule by elders”: gerontocracy. One reason we’re in one is that more than half of registered voters are over 50. On today’s show, Tufts University youth voter researcher Abby Kiesa breaks down the data, tells us why it’s historically so hard to get young people to vote and busts a few myths, like that young people are a liberal monolith.