Politics
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Democratic critics of five-term Republican U.S. Sen. Susan Collins often argue she only breaks with her party when it doesn’t matter.
“Mainers know this game,” a Maine Democratic Party statement said as the senator prepared to cast a vote against President Donald Trump’s nominee for attorney general, Todd Blanche, who was confirmed by the narrow Republican majority last weekend.
Collins’ votes on Supreme Court Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch opened the door to criticism as the pair later helped overturn abortion rights in Roe v. Wade. Other votes on policy, anti-abortion and election-denying judicial and Cabinet nominees continue to fire up critics as she seeks a historic sixth term.
A Bangor Daily News review of her voting record shows that two things can be true in an increasingly partisan Senate: While she rarely casts deciding votes against Republicans, she has cast more of those votes than anyone else in the chamber.
Collins has cast the chamber’s deciding vote — meaning her vote alone would have changed the outcome — 200 times, or 2% of the 10,076 votes she’s cast, according to a review of roll-call data collected by VoteView. Most of those votes, 144, or 72%, have helped her own party, while she has cast 56 that delivered Democratic-preferred outcomes.
That’s the most votes of that kind by any senators against their own party over Collins’ tenure from 1997 to 2026. Collins ranks seventh in her rate of party-breaking decisive votes, behind several senators with far shorter careers and much fewer votes.
The senator’s track record on decisive votes offers one snapshot at odds with claims she only breaks with the GOP when there’s political cover. But critics note that’s only part of the full picture.
With control of the Senate on the line, Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Troy Jackson and allies make the case that Collins is neither as moderate as she once was nor as she claims now, at a time of unprecedented expansion of White House power under Trump.
Democrats maintain Collins votes with Trump an overwhelming majority of the time. She’s broken with Republicans on decisive votes four times since he retook the White House, compared with nine decisive votes during the first Trump administration, 12 during the Biden administration, 16 during the eight years of the Obama administration and 13 over former President George W. Bush’s two terms.
The Maine Democratic Party pointed to Collins’ 19 deciding votes for Trump nominees, but no deciding votes against one. Democrats also cite party-bucking votes against Blanche, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, former Education Secretary Betsy Devos and a vote against a motion to advance a bill repealing the Affordable Care Act as votes “only cast once it was clear they would pass.”
Collins’ team disputes this, noting that she was the first Republican to come out against Blanche before his confirmation was secured, and that she was the first in her party to oppose pushes to repeal Obamacare in 2017.
Democrats also argue some of Collins’ votes amount to too little, too late, such as an Iran war powers resolution on which she joined Democrats or her vote against the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which came after a procedural vote that let the measure advance and led to cuts to Medicaid and other federal assistance programs. Her team says that procedural vote helped allow her to push for an amendment to partially offset cuts to rural hospitals.
“While Susan Collins has spent 30 years in Washington selling out Maine and putting billionaires first, Troy Jackson will stand up and fight for Mainers,” Jackson spokesperson Maggie Amjad said.
But Collins’ campaign pointed to the senator’s voting record during the first years of the last several administrations, going back to Bush, all of them ranging between 85% and 95% with the president’s position regardless of party, according to Roll Call and other trackers. The Washington Post reported in December that 2025 saw 659 roll-call votes, more than any odd-numbered year this century.
That’s one of the reasons 2025 shows a higher percentage of Trump-aligned votes, including on many noncontroversial nominees that may have passed with a bipartisan voice vote or unanimous consent in previous eras, Collins’ team argued. Her spokesperson, Blake Kernen, noted the senator has been often recognized as the most bipartisan senator in “stark contrast” to Jackson’s “20-year career in Augusta as an extreme partisan politician.”
“[Sen. Collins] takes every single vote seriously and carefully considers her decision to act in the best interest of Maine and America,” she said.
Kyle Kondik, managing editor of the nonpartisan Sabato’s Crystal Ball newsletter at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, noted Capitol Hill has become increasingly polarized over the years, leading to far fewer overall breaks with either party.
He noted that some votes by vulnerable members of both parties “end up being hall passes, where somebody’s vote is not actually needed.” But it’s nothing new, he said, for criticism to link lawmakers to an unpopular president, especially when their party label doesn’t match their overall state or district.
“Twenty years ago, you would’ve had a number of red state Democrats and a greater number of blue state Republicans in the House and Senate,” he said. “Nowadays you don’t see that.”