Our Mission

Public Service Was Never Meant to Be a Lifetime Appointment.

The House and Senate were designed to be filled with citizens who serve, then return home—not professional officeholders who spend decades building committee power, donor networks, and safe seats. No Incumbents exists to close that gap, for members of both parties, in every state.

The Incumbency Problem

Congressional elections are supposed to be competitive. In practice, they rarely are. In the 2024 election cycle, roughly 97% of U.S. House incumbents who sought reelection won, and 20 of 23 Senate incumbents on the ballot won theirs. In 2022, the House reelection rate was 94% and every Senate incumbent who ran, won. Since 1964, the House reelection rate has never dropped below 85%.

The result shows up in tenure. Members of the current Congress have served an average of 8.6 years in the House and 11.2 years in the Senate—roughly double the averages from the 1950s. Longer tenure concentrates power in fewer hands, deepens donor and lobbyist relationships, and makes it harder for new ideas—and new accountability—to reach the floor.

This isn’t a one-party story. Safe seats exist on both sides of the aisle, in both chambers, and incumbency protection is one of the few things a divided Congress has reliably agreed on.

The Case for Term Limits

Public support for congressional term limits is unusually broad and unusually durable. Pew Research found 87% of U.S. adults favor limiting congressional terms—including 90% of Republicans and 86% of Democrats. A 2026 NPR/PBS News/Marist poll found similarly strong, bipartisan majorities. Support this consistent, across this many years and this many polling organizations, is rare in American politics.

Congress itself has never sent a term-limits amendment to the states. In the current 119th Congress, Senator Ted Cruz’s S.J.Res.1 and Representative Ralph Norman’s companion H.J.Res.12 would cap Senators at two terms (12 years) and House members at three terms (6 years). Versions of this amendment have been introduced repeatedly since the 1990s and have never received the floor vote—let alone the two-thirds majority—required to advance.

That’s not an accident. Asking sitting incumbents to vote for their own term limit is asking them to vote against their own career. It rarely happens on its own. It happens when the people replacing them ran on doing exactly that.

Why a Constitutional Amendment

In the 1990s, 23 states passed their own laws limiting the terms of their congressional delegations. In U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton (1995), the Supreme Court struck those laws down, 5–4, ruling that states cannot add qualifications for Congress beyond what the Constitution already specifies (age, citizenship, and residency). The practical consequence: congressional term limits cannot be imposed state-by-state. They require a constitutional amendment passed by two-thirds of both chambers of Congress and ratified by three-quarters of the states—or a convention called under Article V.

That is a high bar by design. It is also exactly why the composition of Congress matters so much. An amendment only moves if enough members are willing to vote for it. Goal one—electing members who will actually cast that vote—is what makes goal two possible.

A Note on Independence

Nonpartisan Means Nonpartisan—Not Neutral About the Problem.

No Incumbents does not endorse a party. It does not carry water for one side of the aisle to attack the other. Our standard is service versus self-interest, applied the same way to every incumbent, in every state, regardless of the letter next to their name. We believe that standard is the only one that can actually build a majority large enough to pass term limits—because it will require members of both parties to get there.

Sources & Citations

Where Our Numbers Come From

Every statistic on this site is sourced from nonpartisan or governmental research. We link primary sources wherever possible so you can verify the numbers yourself.

  1. Ballotpedia, “Election results, 2024: Incumbent win rates by state” (Dec. 2024).
  2. OpenSecrets, “Incumbent politicians enjoy record reelection in aging Congress” (Oct. 2023) and Reelection Rates Over the Years.
  3. Congressional Research Service, Report R48535, Membership of the 119th Congress: A Profile.
  4. Pew Research Center, “How Americans View Proposals to Change the Political System” (Sept. 19, 2023).
  5. NPR / PBS News / Marist Poll, “Poll: Most Americans favor congressional age caps and term limits” (May 2026).
  6. Oyez / Justia, U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton, 514 U.S. 779 (1995).
  7. Congress.gov, S.J.Res.1 and H.J.Res.12, 119th Congress.
  8. Ballotpedia, United States Senate elections, 2026 and United States House elections, 2026.

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