So, this is a question I wonder about occasionally. I really like Barack Obama’s approach to politics as expressed in many of his speeches and particularly as expressed in his book The Audacity of Hope. He claims to be reaching out for common ground and trying to unite the country around values that we generally have in common rather than focusing the debate on divisive policies. On the other hand, he is often described as having an extremely liberal voting record in the US Senate (ranked the most liberal senator in 2007 by the National Journal). This leads me to two questions: 1) Does Obama really have an extremely liberal voting record in the senate? 2) If so, what does that mean for his policies as president (does it contradict his rhetoric?). I decided to do a little research on the first (see below). The second will be a subject for a later post.
Percent of time voting with the majority of his party (from the Washington Post website)
96.7% This puts him in 7th place slightly below Hillary Clinton at 97.2%. For some perspective only nine senators voted with the majority of their party less than 80% of the time
Percentages of Missed Votes
Barack Obama comes up on some of the sites that I have looked at as having missed a lot of votes. I finally found a site that has a graph of missed votes by date and it clearly shows he was in line with the other senators until the beginning of the presidental campaign. I checked and obviously you see a similar pattern with senators McCain and Clinton. It is somewhat horrifying (although not really surprising) that these senators are missing 60-80 of the votes in the senate 1.5 to 2 years before the election. By the way this website www.govtrack.us is very interesting. They have a very interesting statistical method for determining where the members of Congress fit on the political spectrum. Obama is listed as a rank and file Democrat and Clinton as a radical Democrat based on bill sponsorship. McCain is categorized as a rank and file Republican. Check out the site for the definitions.
Scores from various interest groups (from Project Vote Smart’s webpage)
Just a few economics based groups to get started. There are 45 Democrats (including the two independents that caucus with them) and 93 total senators included in this list. Note that all of these are from 2005 and 2006 so they do not direct correspond with the claim that Obama was the most liberal senator in 2007.
Budget, Spending and Taxes
American for tax reform (conservative) 15 – this puts him tied with 9 other Democratic senators for 29th lowest score, basically the middle of the pack for the Democrats.
Citizens for tax justice (liberal) 100 – tied with 20 other Democratic senators with this score
Business
There are scores for industry groups from a wide variety of industries. Obama’s scores for the industry groups range from the teens to 100 and everything in between. Some notable ones:
National Small Business Association: 28 – tied with 4 others for 23rd lowest.
US Chamber of Commerce: 55 – tied with 2 others for 31st lowest
The National Stone, Sand and Gravel Association has him at a 92, while the National Ready Mixed Concrete Association and the International Sleep Products Association have him at 100, so some business groups like him (very interesting right? well maybe not, I don’ think I will go into more detail).
Now for a consumer advocacy group:
Public Citizens Congress Watch; 69 – tied with 9 others for 30th from the highest
I may add more information later, but my conclusion from all of this is that Obama’s voting record would put him roughly in the middle of the Democrats in the Senate by most measures. His voting record is not as moderate as his rhetoric might imply, but I find little evidence that he is one of the most liberal Democrats in the Senate. I will talk about what I think this means later.
Great post! The thing with Obama is that he doesn’t fit neatly into pre-established categories. He is quite liberal when viewed through the lens of his stances on abortion, gay marriage, and the potential for government to play a substantial role in society. But he also has a pragmatic, pro-business side that responsible corporations can readily accept. He doesn’t automatically favor more regulation and assume that environmentalists or labor groups are right and corporations are wrong in every instance. I think that’s precisely what many of us like about the possibility of an Obama presidency – he sees things differently from the typical politicians and he comes at problems from unusual angles.