Senators That Are Least Loyal to Their Parties

CQ Politics has come up with a table on how each congressman, both in the House and Senate, has voted with or against President Bush and how often they vote with their party. For our purposes, I'm going to focus on the Senators and their party loyalty.

I think that the most relevant bit of insight that these ratings give are the Senators from both parties that are least loyal to their parties, because they are the ones who will ultimately decide what cloture motions among others come into place. So, I'll give you the top 7 most disloyal members of each party, starting from least loyal. An asterisk denotes that they are up for reelection in 2010.

Democrats
1.) Evan Bayh (IN)*--voted 65% of the time with the party
2.) Mary Landrieu (LA)--voted 69% of the time with the party
3.) Ben Nelson (NE)--72%
4.) Mark Pryor (AR)--79%
5.) Tim Johnson (SD)--80%
6.) Tom Carper (DE)--80%
7.) Blanche Lincoln (AR)*--81%

These seven are the moderate-to-conservative Democratic Senators that Majority Leader Harry Reid (D) and Barack Obama has to be worried about within his party when passing legislation and invoking cloture.

Republicans
1.) Olympia Snowe (ME)--voted 39% of the time with the party
2.) Susan Collins (ME)--voted 46% of the time with the party
3.) Gordon Smith (OR)--54% he is being replaced by Jeff Merkley (D)
4.) Arlen Specter (PA)*--62%
5.) George Voinovich (OH)*--67%
6.) Norm Coleman (MN)--69% he might be replaced by Al Franken (D)
7.) Lisa Murkowski (AK)*--72%

These moderate-to-liberal Republican Senators are going to consistently make Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R) very nervous when the Democrats try to invoke cloture on a given bill.

McConnell and the rest of the Republicans should be especially worried about Specter and Voinovich, who are both up for reelection in 2010 and are from states that voted for Barack Obama in 2008.