Oh, ok. Were you writing this for people who were already Congressional staffers and wanted to run? It seemed like it was for a more general audience. If you’re not already a Congressional staffer and considering becoming one because it will help you run for Congress, you also need to factor in the chance of failing because you exit the “wants to run for Congress” group after being a staffer, which make the 1 in 40 odds (for staffers who “want to run” according to your guess) optimistic.

Yeah… I think that reinforces my point. If you became a Congressional staffer and still thought you wanted to run and had a shot against your colleagues, you would be competing among that 1 in 8 who feel that way? Or perhaps I’m misconstruing you.

I think the problem is that you’re implying “aspir[ing] to be elected” is some exogenous and immutable characteristic of Congressional staffers. I think it’s probably reasonable to assume that people who don’t aspire to be elected will not be elected, but also that aspiring to be elected is endogenous and depends on how you compare to the entire pool of Congressional staffers, and so that’s the relevant reference class.

Hey StataTheLeft, thanks for finding tenure figures for Senate staffers, that’s a big help! Hopefully it’s similar for the House.

30% turnover = 3.33 years spent on average. It’s actually a bit higher than that because sometimes the same person will stop being a staffer, do something else, and then return (this cycling suppresses the total number of ex-staffers).

“I’d guess that more like 1 in 3 who are promising enough to get elected would try.”

I should have been clearer that I want to focus only on those who want to get elected, and are promising enough that this plan should be taken seriously. My guess is that the only people who really aspire at this level to get elected are the ones with the necessary characteristics, but other people don’t share this intuition.

That said, your guesses are reasonable and not that far from mine in the scheme of things.

I think the next step would be to survey a bunch of Staffers or HLS students on a) do they aspire to join Congress b) do they think they have what it takes to do so.

Better data on the total number of ex-staffers would be helpful, though I think we are pretty close to the right number now.

I’m treating people who aspire to be elected and people who actually might be electable as almost completely overlapping groups. As I say further down, if you can’t imagine yourself being a politician this means you basically don’t have any chance. Do you think this is a mistake?

I’d be worried about naively applying this correction to calculate one’s personal odds of getting–it seems likely that desire to become a member of Congress is substantially shaped by one’s chances of getting elected. E.g., it could be the case that, even though you’re technically only competing with 1/8 of the staffers for spots, those 1/8 are the most competent 1/8–so you’re really competing with all the staffers to be in the top 1/330 or whatever.

1 in 40 staffers who try to get elected being successful sounds surprisingly high to me so I tried to plug in my own numbers.

*30% of Senate staffers have been in the Senate for <=1 year (http://www.congressfoundation.org/storage/documents/CMF_Pubs/cmfsenatesalarystudy2001.pdf). This suggests about 30% turnover for Senate staff. Assuming House staff is the same, this means that about 0.3*15,000 = 4,500 staffers leave each year. I'd guess that means 4,500*36 = 162,000 present and past Congressional staffers between the ages of 40 and 75. So slightly reduces your chances.

*Over the last five congresses, there have been an average of 82.6 freshman members. (Compiled from Wikipedia). So over 36 years, there are 18*82.6 = 1,487 openings over someone's peak years. 19% of those are former staffers, so 283 opportunities for 162,000 staffers. So this gives me 1/572 chance for a random staffer. A bit more skeptical than your numbers.

*If you assume 1/8 try to get elected, then 1 in 72 who try end up getting elected. I'd guess that more like 1 in 3 who are promising enough to get elected would try. So my number is closer to 1 in 191.

*You may want to differentiate between District and DC staffers. I'd guess nearly all staffers who become members are DC staffers.