The three classes of United States Senators are currently made up of 33 or 34 Senate seats each. The purpose of the classes is to determine which Senate seats will be up for election in a given year. The three groups are staggered so that one of them is up for election every two years.
A senator's description as junior or senior senator is not related to his or her class. Rather, a state's senior senator is the one with the greater seniority in the Senate. This is mostly based on length of service.
Read more about Classes Of United States Senators: Historical Division, New States, Class 1, Class 2, Class 3, List of Current Senators By Class
Famous quotes containing the words classes of, classes, united, states and/or senators:
“There are four classes of idols which beset men’s minds. To these for distinction’s sake I have assigned names—calling the first class Idols of the Tribe; the second, Idols of the Cave; the third, Idols of the Market-Place; the fourth, Idols of the Theatre.”
—Francis Bacon (1561–1626)
“There are three classes into which all the women past seventy that ever I knew were to be divided: 1. That dear old soul; 2. That old woman; 3. That old witch.”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)
“Europe and the U.K. are yesterday’s world. Tomorrow is in the United States.”
—R.W. “Tiny” Rowland (b. 1917)
“... no young colored person in the United States today can truthfully offer as an excuse for lack of ambition or aspiration that members of his race have accomplished so little, he is discouraged from attempting anything himself. For there is scarcely a field of human endeavor which colored people have been allowed to enter in which there is not at least one worthy representative.”
—Mary Church Terrell (1863–1954)
“When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,
And when he cried the little children died in the streets.”
—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)