McCain's Missed Votes

A disclaimer before we start -- the erratic nature of senate scheduling and the rigors of modern campaigning make it quite usual for presidential candidates to miss a fair number of votes.

Now on to the main story, John McCain missed 63.8% of the votes in the 110th Congress. He leads the pack in the Senate, beating out both Clinton and Obama even though they had a much longer primary season. McCain also missed more votes than South Dakota Sen. Tim Johnson, who suffered from a stroke and underwent a lengthy recovery!

Obama missed 45.5% of the votes and Clinton 32.3% of the votes.

Daniel De Groot compiles a neat summary of the key votes missed by McCain. You can make up your mind about whether any of those matter to you as a voter, but feel free to add in a healthy dose of skepticism when McCain rails about the partisanship in Congress, or about his ability to make decisions that put the country first, without regard to political costs.

For a more partisan spin on the matter, see Barbara Boxer's press release.

In interest of fairness I also compared McCain’s percentage of missed votes to John Kerry’s. Kerry missed 72% of the votes when he was running against Bush. Keep in mind that Kerry was running against an incumbent, who can make appearances at various places on the tax-payer's dime, ostensibly on non-campaign related issues. Also, there is one more session for the current Congress, so there is a chance that McCain will match Kerry's record.