Vote
Date
Vote
Date
Sen. Susan Collins

200 times, Collins was the deciding vote

Every roll call since 1997 where flipping her vote alone changed the result · Tap a dot

All decisive votes — 200
2.0%
of the 10,076 roll calls she has cast
140 certain
60 assume the VP breaks a resulting tie along conventional party lines
Source: VoteView, 105th–119th Congresses
Republican-benefiting — 144
72.0%
of her 200 decisive votes
Her deciding vote delivered the outcome the GOP wanted — confirming a nominee, passing a bill, sinking a Democratic amendment.
Democratic-benefiting — 56
28.0%
of her 200 decisive votes
Her deciding vote delivered the outcome Democrats wanted, breaking with her own party's majority.
Filled = certain
Outlined = assumes the VP breaks a resulting tie along conventional party lines
Source: VoteView, 105th–119th Congresses
Democratic-benefiting — 56
Republican-benefiting — 144
Filled = certain
Outlined = assumes the VP breaks a resulting tie along conventional party lines
Source: VoteView, 105th–119th Congresses
By count
Decisive votes cast against one's own party, 1997–2026. Nobody who served has more than Collins.
By rate (min. 200 votes cast)
Same measure as a share of each senator's total votes. Collins ranks 7th — behind senators with far shorter, less-tested careers.
272 senators served alongside Collins, 1997–2026
Methodology

Data: VoteView bulk roll-call records, 105th–119th Congresses (1997–2026). The Aug. 8, 2026 vote confirming Todd Blanche as attorney general was added by hand from the Senate's roll-call XML, since it postdates VoteView's most recent bulk update.

A vote is "decisive" if replacing only Collins' actual vote with its opposite — holding every other senator's vote fixed — would have changed whether the measure passed, using the actual threshold that applied (simple majority, 60-vote cloture, or two-thirds for treaties, impeachment and veto overrides). Cloture on nominations has needed only a simple majority since the Senate's November 2013 rule change (extended to Supreme Court nominees in April 2017); legislative cloture still needs 60.

60 of the 200 decisive votes assume the vice president breaks a resulting tie for their own party's position — the convention, and what happens in every real tie in this data. The other 140 require no such assumption. "Benefited"/"own party" use Senate caucus: Sanders, King, Manchin, Sinema and Jeffords (after 2001) count as Democratic caucus.