The Congress elected in November 2020, that is to say the entity formed by the House of Representatives (435 members) and the Senate (100), is the most diverse and equal ever elected.
- The most feminized Congress ever elected
With 26.9% of women, or 144 out of 535, this Parliament which will discuss and vote on the laws of the 46e president, Joe Biden, is the most feminized in the history of the United States. However, it remains much less equal than many Western countries: women represented 47% of the Swedish Parliament in 2020, 44% in Spain and 36% in France. It is also behind the company, which, in Europe as in the United States, counts approximately 51% of women.
This share of 26.9% is nevertheless a major development since the previous “record”, recorded during the mid-term elections in 2018: American voters elected 127 women in both legislative chambers, or 23.7%. of Congress. This rebalancing, which is accelerating in the XXIe century, is mostly done by Democrats.
In the House of Representatives, which is renewed entirely every two years, Democrats won 222 seats, of which 89 are held by women (or 40% of the majority), against 29 out of 212 for Republicans (or 13.7 % of opposition). In the Senate, which is renewed by thirds every two years, the trend is the same: elected Democrats represent 34% of the majority, while the nine Republicans represent only 18% of the opposition.
- A Congress older than the one it succeeds
The two American chambers also have a new youngest: Madison Cawthorn. The elected North Carolina Republican, 25, relegates New Yorker Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, six years her senior, to second place. But overall, this Congress is less “young” than the previous one: the average age of representatives is 58 years against 57 years and 6 months during the previous legislature, in the Senate this average goes from 62 years and 11 months to 64 years.
- A record of elected representatives of “racial minorities”
This Congress has the largest number of people from “racial minorities” ever elected, but it still does not mirror American society. Thus, whites make up 60.1% of the American population, but constitute 80.4% of both houses.
As a result, other communities are less represented: black lawmakers are 11.4%, while blacks represent 13.4% of the 328 million Americans, according to the United States Census Bureau. It is worse for the representativeness of Latinos: they make up 8.22% of Congress, while their share in US society is 18.5%. Finally, Asian and Hawaiian elected representatives represent 4.8% of Congress, which is quite close to their share in the general population (5.6%).
- Eleven elected LGBT representatives
Finally, according to the daily count Washington post, this 117e Congress is the one with the largest number of openly LGBT elected representatives. These eleven elected (against ten in the previous legislature) are all Democrats: they represent 2% of the two chambers. While this proportion is also a record, it remains below the 4.5% of the American population who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender.
- An overwhelming majority of Christians, an elected atheist
In total, 88.1% of those newly elected to Congress declare themselves Christians (first Protestants, then Catholics), while these are found in American society only up to 65%, according to calculations by Pew Research Center (PRC). The elected representatives who declare themselves to be Jews are 6.2%, against 2% within the total population.
In contrast, 26% of Americans define themselves as “Atheists”, “Agnostics” or ” nothing in particular “ (still according to the PRC), while they represent only… 0.2% of those elected to Congress. It is in fact a single elected, the Democratic senator of Arizona Kyrsten Sinema.
