No, Susan Collins Does Not Vote With Trump 95% of the Time — The Real Number Is Much Lower

The claim that Susan Collins votes with Donald Trump 95% of the time has circulated widely, especially during election cycles. It is false. Nonpartisan vote-tracking organizations consistently show her alignment with Trump's positions ranging from roughly 68% to 83%, well below the figure being claimed and well below most of her Republican colleagues.

FiveThirtyEight, which built a dedicated Trump Score tracker for every member of Congress, found Collins voted in line with Trump's position about 79% of the time during the 115th Congress and just 68% during the 116th. For context, the average Senate Republican scored around 90% in the same period. That gap is significant — it reflects a real pattern of independence, not a rounding error.

ProPublica and GovTrack data tell the same story. Across multiple congresses and methodologies, Collins consistently ranks among the Republican senators least likely to follow Trump or her party's lead. She voted against the Affordable Care Act repeal, voted to convict Trump in both impeachment trials, and broke with her party on a range of other high-profile votes.

To be fair, 68–83% alignment is still substantial. Critics who argue Collins is not truly independent have a point worth taking seriously. But there is a meaningful difference between "votes with Trump most of the time" and "votes with Trump 95% of the time." PolitiFact examined similar claims of 90% alignment and rated them misleading — the 95% figure is even further from the evidence.

This kind of claim spreads because aggregate vote statistics are easy to manipulate. By including or excluding certain categories of votes — routine procedural matters versus contested priorities — you can push the number up or down considerably. Anyone citing a single percentage without explaining what votes were counted is leaving out the most important part of the story.