Are the Congressional Democrats split into two different parties based on their support for either Sen. Clinton or Sen. Obama? And are the gaps significant enough to have implications for governance? Schmitt and Yglesias argue that there is a coalition of 80s and 90s centrists for Clinton and an old liberal and newbie progressive phalanx for Obama. The potential downside of this hypothesis is that a hardened generational split would make governance hard for either Democratic winner. Some are concerned that there is too much division amongst the party to win, be effective, and so on.

So, let’s look at the data. I charted out U.S. House Democrats committed to either candidate by the year they were sworn-in.

My take: the divisions are even less clear cut than Schmitt and Yglesias indicate. There were three surprises:

1. Hillary does well with pre-Clinton Dems, regardless of whether they are from the 80s or previous decades.

2. Sen. Clinton is not as popular as I expected with folks that got their first election to the House while on the ballot with Bill or during his presidential terms. The exception is the class that was on the ballot with Bill in his 1996 re-election. Hillary gets her biggest spread from that class – which I think could be said to be the apex of Bill Clinton’s presidential prestige.

3. Sen. Obama clearly wins amongst the newest U.S. House Democrats, but only among the most recent class of representatives does he outright dominate. It seem that Sen. Clinton has plenty of supporters amongst post-Clinton presidency Democrats in the U.S. House.

From this I think it is hard to argue that there is a powerful generational divide. Amongst the big classes, neither candidate is getting blanked out. But I am curious about what y’all think.