# Who serves longer, the average Senator or the average House of Reps person?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-serves-longer-the-average-senator-or-the-average-house-of-reps-person/643187>\
**Category:** Politics & Elections\
**Created:** [December 6, 2012, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-serves-longer-the-average-senator-or-the-average-house-of-reps-person/643187 "2012-12-06T15:09:30Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a9a28c/32.png) [@pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pseudotriton_ruber_ruber)\
**Post date:** [December 6, 2012, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-serves-longer-the-average-senator-or-the-average-house-of-reps-person/643187/1 "2012-12-06T15:09:30Z")

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Counting three H of R terms as one complete Senate term, do Senators have more or less turnover than Reps? (Don’t get into oddball cases where someone serves non-consecutive terms, and don’t get into the commonality of Senators beginning their careers as Representatives.) In general, is a career in the Senate longer or shorter than the average career in the house? If I had to guess, I’d say the H of R term is longer because a district is more reliably partisan than a whole state, and because while Reps often move up to the Senate, they tend to get elected for the first time at a younger age, so longer careers are likelier, but does anyone have handy something that is better that my WAG?

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**Author:** ![bup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6bbea6/32.png) [@bup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bup)\
**Post date:** [December 6, 2012, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-serves-longer-the-average-senator-or-the-average-house-of-reps-person/643187/2 "2012-12-06T15:24:22Z")

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There’s obviously a factual answer to this question, but I’ll WAG senators.

Although senators get more opposition when they run every 6 years, and although many congress-critters are entrenched and live in areas that are heavily one party or the other, I think the redistricting that happens every ten years tips the balance toward senators.

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**Author:** ![Tom\_Scud](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f08c70/32.png) [@Tom\_Scud](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Scud)\
**Post date:** [December 6, 2012, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-serves-longer-the-average-senator-or-the-average-house-of-reps-person/643187/3 "2012-12-06T15:29:43Z")

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At least for the current Congress, there’s a specific answer:

[http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R41647.pdf](http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R41647.pdf) - note: PDF

> [@](#):
>
> The average length of service for Representatives at the beginning of the 112th Congress was 9.8 years (4.9 terms); for Senators, 11.4 years (1.9 terms).

The 112th Congress is the one elected in 2010, not the incoming one. I don’t know how these numbers compare to congresses during more stable times; obviously the big swing in the 2010 elections would push the average term of the representatives down somewhat.