General Synod elections 2026: the year of birth and age profile of the members elected.
Overview
This page describes the members elected in 2026 by year of birth. Age is 2026 minus year of birth, so it can be a year out for an individual.
Year of birth is held only for those elected, not for candidates who were not elected, so the page describes who was elected, not who stood or how age affected the chance of being elected.
Bands are by year of birth (for example 1960 to 1969), so they do not shift as time passes. Hover over a band, a year-range box or a column to see the age it equals in 2026.
Names are shown, as in the other explorers: click any underlined number or coloured bar for the list of members behind it, and click a name to open the candidate box.
The page opens on the elected Clergy and Laity members who have a year of birth; tick Bishops under House to add the 9 suffragan bishops. The 9 Armed Forces and Channel Islands members have no year of birth and are not included.
Section 1 shows members by year of birth, section 2 the share in each band, sections 3 and 4 compare groups, section 5 is a table of constituencies with each member's year on a line, section 6 compares women and men, section 7 sets year of birth against other characteristics, section 8 looks at when in the count members were elected, and section 9 lists the oldest and youngest. The Sections button in the strip below opens, collapses or jumps to any section.
Median is the middle value; mean is the average. The range runs from the 25th to the 75th percentile (nearest-rank method), with the median marked.
Brackets after a figure show the same figure for all Clergy and Laity elected, for comparison.
A constituency is a single election for a House: Oxford (Clergy) and Oxford (Laity) are separate rows. The table in section 5 shows oldest as the earliest year of birth and youngest as the latest.
Stance labels are the public Conservative to Revisionist labels used in the Stance Explorer.
Filters applied:
Summary of your selection
1. Members by year of birth
Each column is the number of elected members born in that year, or in each 5-year or 10-year period if you choose that below, split by House. The shaded blocks mark the decades, with the decade total above each; the dashed line marks the median year of birth of the selection.
Hover for the year, the count and the age it equals in 2026; click a column or a decade total for the names.
The years always run from the earliest to the latest year of birth in the whole data set, whatever the filters, and extend automatically if the data change.
2. Share of members in each band
There is one chart for each House chosen in the House control, and a combined chart when more than one is shown. Each bar is the share of that House's selected elected members born in the band; the black mark shows the share for all Clergy and Laity elected, for comparison.
When Clergy and Laity are both shown, a further chart sets the two Houses side by side, band by band.
Click a count for the names.
3. Compare groups
Choose one or two characteristics under Compare by and Then by; each group in the selection above gets a row, with a total row first.
Click a heading to sort; click a group row to collapse or expand its sub-groups; click a count for the names.
Use Columns to show the share of each group in every band of year of birth, hidden to begin with.
4. Bands within each group
The same groups as section 3, as a bar for each group showing the share of its members born in each 10-year band. Click a segment for the names.
5. Constituencies by year of birth
One row for each constituency (an election for one House) that has members in the selection. The line runs from the earliest to the latest year of birth in the whole data set, and each member sits on it as the last two digits of their year of birth, coloured by House. Members born close together are stacked.
Hover over a year to see the name; click it to open the candidate box. Click anywhere else on a row to open the election box. Click a heading to sort. The table follows all the filters above.
Oldest is the earliest year of birth in the constituency, youngest the latest, and mean the average year of birth.
6. Women and men by year of birth
Women to the left and men to the right, for each band chosen under Band width in section 2, oldest at the top. Click a bar for the names.
7. Year of birth and other characteristics
Choose a characteristic to set against year of birth. The bars show, for each band (the width chosen under Band width in section 2), how many members have each value; the median view shows, for each group, the middle half of year of birth as a bar and the median as a marker.
Click a bar segment or a count for the names. Groups are compared only within the selection above.
8. When in the count were they elected?
Members are grouped by how they were elected: reaching the quota at count 1, reaching it at a later count (after transfers), or filling a last seat below the quota. Unopposed members have no count.
The dot chart sets each member's first preferences, as a percentage of the quota, against year of birth. A dot at or above the dashed line had a quota's worth of first preferences.
Year of birth is known only for those elected, so this describes who was elected and how; it cannot show whether age helped or hurt anyone's chance of election.
9. Oldest and youngest members
The oldest and youngest members in the selection, with anyone tied on the same year of birth included. Choose how many to show in each panel (10 to begin with) or show everyone. Click a name to open the candidate box.