Age played a significant role in the 2020 election—in surprising ways. In an article in The Washington Post by Dan Zak, “The Age of the Aged,” the subtitle is “Joe Biden, seventy-eight, will be the nation’s oldest president. His peers in Congress are just as old.” Mitch McConnell, the top Republican in the Senate, is nine months older than Biden, and Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic speaker of the House, is twenty-three months older than McConnell.

All three are part of “The Silent Generation,” those born between 1923 and 1944 who are now seventy-seven to ninety-eight years old. The US electorate is also getting older. The median age among registered voters was fifty in 2019, according to Pew Research Center. Paradoxically, it was the youngest voters in the country who helped elect the oldest president ever.