Beyond the Dome

It looks like we’ll be hearing an awful lot this week about how John McCain voted with President Bush 95 percent of the time last year. So it’s time for a refresher course on what that statistic — which comes from CQ’s annual vote studies — really means.

The line is cropping up over and over again in the Democrats’ speeches and statements. One of the latest was Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s response this morning to a McCain ad about a Hillary Rodham Clinton supporter who plans to vote for him: “Cheap political stunts like this ad show that John McCain is offering more of the same: four more years of failed Bush policies and a record of supporting George Bush 95 percent of the time and losing track of how many houses he owns.”

As it turns out, though, last year is about the worst possible example the Democrats could use to make their point. Yes, technically, McCain did vote with Bush 95 percent of the time last year — when he showed up. But he only made 44 percent of those votes.

That’s such a low percentage that CQ didn’t even list McCain in the rankings of the senators who sided most often with Bush. (We only list senators who showed up for at least 50 percent of the votes.)

And because McCain was gone so much, most of the votes he cast were focused on just two issues: Iraq and immigration. Iraq is a legitimate subject for Democrats, since Bush and McCain both fought their efforts to end the war. But on immigration, Bush, McCain and the Democrats were on the same side.

There were plenty of other years where McCain sided with Bush almost as often and actually made most of the votes — so the statistics actually meant something. For the year the Democrats are using, though, the 95 percent support for Bush is pretty close to meaningless.