Donald Trump carried Missouri by 19 percentage points on his way to the presidency. But Sen. Claire McCaskill, who faces a fight for reelection next year in the conservative-leaning state, isn’t exactly voting like Washington, D.C.’s idea of a red-state Democrat.

McCaskill has sided with Democratic leaders against all of Trump’s most contentious Cabinet nominees and six of the eight regulatory rollbacks teed up by the Senate GOP since Inauguration Day, according to a POLITICO analysis. She is not alone among red-state Democrats who lately have remained in their party’s fold: On the Senate’s highest-profile votes since the president took office, eight of the 10 most vulnerable Democrats on the ballot next year voted with their party at least four-fifths of the time.


Even famously GOP-friendly Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) has sided with Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren more often than he aligned with Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

It's obviously still early in Trump's presidency to draw sweeping conclusions. But the voting behavior of Senate Democrats — particularly the 10 from states Trump won in November — suggests that the president has a lot more bridge-building to do with red-state Democrats. Their support could prove critical to the success or failure of his legislative priorities, such as infrastructure and tax reform.

So far, Trump has mostly fostered Democratic unity by tweeting combatively and sparking protests around the country with his order barring travelers from majority-Muslim nations.

"The Trump administration has been so outrageous in its early stages that it's probably made it easier for Democrats to hang together," Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said in an interview. "It's not hard to be united around the United States not discriminating against people based on religion."

The burgeoning unity among Democratic senators — “about the only emergency brake” on the Trump train, as Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) put it one week after his ticket lost the White House — is about to face its biggest test yet in the coming confirmation vote on Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch. While Minority Leader Chuck Schumer's (D-N.Y.) caucus has stuck together against the GOP's Obamacare repeal bid, it's far from clear that Democrats can deny Gorsuch 60 votes.

McCaskill said she has based her votes so far this year on substance, not partisanship.

"I have not voted for some Trump Cabinet members. I have voted for others," the Missourian said in a brief interview, adding that the same pattern holds for the eight rollbacks of Obama-era regulations that the Senate has passed so far. "So I make a decision based on each individual issue, and it’s not about party."

Liberal activists who are mobilizing demonstrations to protect Obamacare and pushing Democrats to block Gorsuch say Republicans are kidding themselves if they think senators who must court Trump voters next year are easy marks for his agenda.

“Grass-roots mobilization has already opened the way for red-state Democrats to follow their conscience,” MoveOn.org Washington director Ben Wikler said in an interview. “Everything about the way this administration operates suggests it will keep inflaming an incredibly broad resistance movement."

Democratic senators facing reelection in states Trump carried “understand that these are not normal times,” said Ilyse Hogue, president of the abortion-rights group NARAL Pro-Choice America. “They understand that there is a heightened sense of desire and expectation that people are going to be heard.”

There’s also a heightened GOP awareness that Democrats from swing states where Trump prevailed narrowly — such as Sens. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan and Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, both members of Schumer's leadership team — have more incentive to vote with the rest of their party. But that doesn’t mean they won’t face political pressure to move to the right.

In the past week, the National Republican Senatorial Committee has slammed Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) as an “unapologetic Washington liberal” and Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) for his “knee-jerk opposition" to Gorsuch.

To identify the most divisive Senate votes of Trump’s young presidency, POLITICO’s analysis focused on confirmation of the seven Cabinet nominees whom Democratic leaders singled out for opposition and the eight deregulatory measures that Senate Republicans have teed up for Trump to sign so far.

The Democrat crossing the aisle most often during those 15 votes, Manchin did so on seven of them. Excluding Manchin, Trump's most controversial Cabinet nominees lost Republican votes as often as they won Democratic votes.

Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) was close behind Manchin with five GOP-aligned votes. Sens. Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.) and Angus King, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, broke from the bulk of their party on three of the 15 votes.

McCaskill, the fourth-most conservative Trump-state Democrat, has split from her leaders on two deregulatory measures under Trump, voting to kill an Interior Department rule for the disposal of coal mining waste in streams and a teacher preparation rule at the Department of Education that drew criticism from teachers unions. Montana Democratic Sen. Jon Tester, up for reelection next year in a state Trump carried by 21 percentage points, voted to strike down the education rule and another regulation governing background checks for Social Security recipients seeking to buy guns.

Moderate Maine Sen. Susan Collins of Maine broke with her Republican leaders on more of the Senate's 15 most consequential votes under Trump than McCaskill and Tester split from Schumer, Warren and Sanders. Collins strayed from the GOP pack three times, voting against Scott Pruitt's bid to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, against Education Secretary nominee Betsy DeVos, and against axing the coal mining waste regulation.

Both McCaskill and Tester opposed all seven of the Cabinet nominees at the top of Democrats' target list: Pruitt, DeVos, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, and White House budget director Mick Mulvaney.

Among less politicized Cabinet confirmations, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson got a "no" from McCaskill and a "yes" from Tester, while both joined most other red-state Democrats in supporting Trump's picks to lead the departments of Commerce, Energy and Interior.

McCaskill also called for Sessions to resign amid the ongoing controversy over his meetings with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak while serving as a Trump campaign surrogate (that landed the Missouri Democrat into a pickle of her own over her attendance at a group meeting with Kislyak). Even Manchin, who voted for Sessions, quickly pressed him to recuse himself from investigations into Russian meddling in the presidential election.

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Few other Democratic senators have crossed the aisle to side with the GOP on polarizing votes since Inauguration Day. Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia supported Tillerson, while Sens. Bill Nelson of Florida and Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada voted against axing the teacher preparation regulation.

POLITICO's analysis excluded three Cabinet-level nominees who Senate Democrats did not add to their top tier of targets for confirmation fights: Defense Secretary James Mattis, Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly and CIA Director Mike Pompeo. Fifteen Democrats backed Pompeo on the Senate floor on Jan. 23, triggering a groundswell of grass-roots liberal fury.

Despite the early solidarity, however, Democratic senators are well aware that their red-state colleagues will break from the pack on future votes.

"Every member of our caucus is going to make a decision about what's right for their state," Murphy said. "Chuck's not twisting anybody's arms, so there are going to be times when members of our caucus will vote with Republicans. That's democracy."