Politics

Congress Demographics

By Sunlight Foundation & Participatory Politics Foundation

New York Times:

Members of the United States Congress do not look much like the public they are elected to represent.

Congress now includes more women and Asians than ever, but it is considerably less diverse, older, better educated, more likely to have served in the military and not as likely to have been born abroad than Americans over all.

Probably the most outrageous data point on Congress’s lack of diversity is that there is currently only one black senator — Sen. Roland Burris [D, IL].

Burris is not running for re-election in 2010 and both of the viable candidates for his seat are white. That means that, unless a black candidate wins in another state, the 112th Senate iwll have no black members.

Full post as published by Open Congress on February 10, 2010 (boomark / email).