Ed Morrissey writes that John McCain’s “statement, that Obama’s voting record is ‘more to the left than the announced socialist in the United States Senate, Bernie Sanders of Vermont,’ is unfortunately not terribly accurate.” Morrissey contends that McCain’s statement is inaccurate because National Journal‘s Senate scorecard in 2007 only includes 99 votes while a more “comprehensive” index compiled by UC-San Diego political scientist Keith Poole includes 388 votes-every vote that wasn’t unanimous. But it’s not clear that the Poole’s rating system is better than National Journal‘s. Morrissey writes that “The [Poole] index shows how often each member votes with their own party as a measure of partisan and ideological leaning.” In other words, Poole is measuring partisanship, not ideology. National Journal, on the other hand, ranks each vote as conservative or liberal. Poole’s index ranked John McCain as the second most conservative senator in 2005-2006. That doesn’t seem terribly accurate to me.
