Vote Rankings for Senators Up for Reelection in 2008

Following up on my last post laying out Congressional Quarterly's vote rankings for the 2008 field, as promised I have compiled data on the 2006 voting record of every Senator up for reelection in two years. Just as in the last post, the first rating, the Presidential Support Score, measures the percentage of roll call votes in which a given member of Congress supported the publicly-held position of the White House. The second rating, the party unity score, measures the percentage of the time that a given member of Congress votes with the majority of his own party on a roll call vote in which the majority of the other party votes the other way.

Republicans
BOLD/ALL CAPS: Currently rated competitive or potentially competitive by the Cook Political Report (.pdf)
Italics: Approval rating below 55 percent in November, according to SurveyUSA polling
State Senator Presidential Support Score Party Unity Score
Alabama Sessions 91 96
Alaska Stevens 93 80
COLORADO ALLARD 91 95
Georgia Chambliss 93 94
Idaho Craig 94 91
Kansas Roberts 88 94
Kentucky McConnell 91 96
MAINE COLLINS 79 66
MINNESOTA COLEMAN 88 77
Mississippi Cochran 89 87
Nebraska Hagel 96 84
NEW HAMPSHIRE SUNUNU 90 91
New Mexico Domenici 91 85
NORTH CAROLINA DOLE 90 94
OKLAHOMA INHOFE 88 94
Oregon Smith 83 80
South Carolina Graham 91 82
Tennessee Alexander 93 94
Texas Cornyn 91 97
Virginia Warner 91 81
Wyoming Enzi 91 98

Judging by these numbers, John Sununu and Wayne Allard, more than any other Republican Senators up for reelection in 2008, are out of touch with their constituents. Both New Hampshire and Colorado are swing states, no longer supportive of the type of fierce partisanship and unquestioning support for President Bush that plays in other regions of the country. As such, the clear hackery indicated by their voting records during 2006 should cause them real problems if they were to run for reelection in 2008.

But Sununu and Allard are not the only Republicans whose voting history puts them far to the right of their constituents. Both Gordon Smith of Oregon and Norm Coleman of Minnesota play up their perceived moderate stances, and indeed these voting patters do put them towards the center of the Senate (certainly in the middle fifth). But at the same time, four times out of five -- or more -- each of these Senators votes with his party on a party-line vote and supports the President's position, neither of which scream moderation. Even the supposedly centrist Susan Collins is less centrist that she and others would have you believe, being significantly less willing to diverge from the party line than her fellow Maine Republican, Olympia Snowe, or others like Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, and Ben Nelson of Nebraska. Such a tendency to toe her caucus' line might not play so well among the fiercely independent electorate in Maine.

Below the fold, the vote rankings of all the Senate Democrats up in 2008.

Democrats
BOLD/ALL CAPS: Currently rated competitive or potentially competitive by the Cook Political Report (.pdf)
Italics: Approval rating below 55 percent in November, according to SurveyUSA polling
State Senator Presidential Support Score Party Unity Score
ARKANSAS PRYOR 64 76
Deleware Biden 55 91
Illinois Durbin 47 98
IOWA HARKIN 46 95
LOUISIANA LANDRIEU 71 75
Massachusetts Kerry 51 95
Michigan Levin 56 94
MONTANA BAUCUS 61 79
New Jersey Lautenberg 46 97
Rhode Island Reed 53 96
SOUTH DAKOTA JOHNSON 57 83
West Virginia Rockefeller 55 84