The number of Republicans with a moderate voting record has dropped elevenfold in three years as Democrats have started to course-correct from a mass shift to the left, according to the Institute for Legislative Analysis.
The libertarian-leaning public policy group assigns an annual ideological rating to each of the 535 members of Congress based on their voting records.
The rating scale runs from 0 to 100%. The more a lawmaker votes for reduced federal spending, limiting regulatory power, a smaller scope of government and civil-liberties protections, the higher their rating will be.
“While scorecards based on a handful of votes can be useful for showing differences among lawmakers, our annual index covers every substantive vote and is designed to show how political philosophies and party dynamics change over time,” Institute for Legislative Analysis CEO Ryan McGowan said.
“The latest report shows that different wings of the Republican Party are increasingly gravitating toward President Trump’s policy agenda,” he said. “On the Democratic side, we are beginning to see more internal variation in what has otherwise been a party far more unified in its voting than Republicans.”
Only three Republicans scored below 60% for their votes in 2025, the first year of Mr. Trump’s second term. That’s down from 33 with moderate voting records in 2023, while President Biden was still in office.
The three Republicans with the most moderate voting records in 2025 were Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania and Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, with respective scores of 49%, 53% and 58%.
The three Republicans with the more conservative voting records on the ILA scale were Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona, and Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky — all of whom had scores hovering around 99%.
The number of Republicans scoring above 90% also dropped from 63 in 2023 to 27 last year.
“Where earlier Republican orthodoxy often emphasized free trade and skepticism toward broad industrial policy, a more populist and nationalist governing style appears to have normalized a wider use of tariffs and more situational departures from older constitutional and civil-libertarian instincts,” the ILA report said.
The finding that Republican ideology tightened on both ends is not surprising given the GOP’s narrow House and Senate majorities, which forced more compromise in the party.
The ILA still found Democrats were far more philosophically unified than Republicans when evaluated against its limited government baseline.
“In 2025, the average Democratic score was 10.31, compared with 79.62 for Republicans,” the report said. “That means Democrats remain clustered much closer to one another near the low end, while Republicans still span a wider range of positions.”
Democrats’ average score was nearly three points lower in 2023, reflecting a “modest” shift away from the left.
The number of Democrats scoring above 10% rose from 28 in 2023 to 99 in 2025. The ILA attributed the shift to a party fracturing on border, crime and national security issues that swept Republicans into power.
The three Democrats with the highest ratings on the scale are all from swing districts. Reps. Henry Cuellar of Texas, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington and Don Davis of North Carolina respectively scored 55%, 49% and 47%.
The report also pointed out that GOP lawmakers who have been publicly criticized for breaks from the party, like former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, have remained ideologically consistent in their voting records.
Ms. Greene’s ILA score dropped less than 2 points from just under 96% in 2023 to slightly above 93% in 2025, while Mr. Massie had a consistent score just under 94% in both years.
The ILA contrasted that with a downward shift in Minnesota GOP Sen. Josh Hawley’s score from 84% in 2023 to 70%, which the report said “lines up with a broader movement inside the party toward more populist and nationalist policy preferences, particularly where trade and state power intersect.”
“The contrast between the Greene-Massie stability pattern and the Hawley trajectory helps clarify an important point: some individual members stay largely where they have always been, while the operative center of the party moves around them,” the ILA said.
