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How does Mike Lee's voting record compare to other conservative Senators in 2025?
Executive summary
Mike Lee’s roll‑call attendance and ideological placement place him as a reliably conservative, often outlier, Republican in the Senate: GovTrack reports he missed 165 of 5,214 roll calls (3.2%), roughly the Senate median (2.9%) [1]. Issue‑by‑issue scorecards show he ranks high on conservative scorecards (Heritage Action) and low on labor/environment group scorecards (Heritage Action; LCV; AFL‑CIO) — indicating a consistent conservative voting pattern compared with other Senate Republicans [2] [3] [4]. Available sources do not provide a single, direct 2025 comparison table of Lee against all other conservative senators, but multiple outlets offer metrics (ideology maps, scorecards, missed votes) you can combine to compare him [1] [5] [6].
1. Where Lee sits on the Senate ideological map: a conservative with a distinctive profile
GovTrack’s ideological chart places Lee among conservative senators and describes him as a visible, ideologically driven Republican based on sponsorship and cosponsorship activity through Nov. 18, 2025; GovTrack’s data also shows Lee’s lifetime missed‑vote rate (3.2%) is near the median for current senators (2.9%) — suggesting he is an active participant whose voting record is substantively conservative rather than an outlier caused by absenteeism [1].
2. How conservative scorekeepers evaluate him: high marks from conservative groups
Heritage Action’s Scorecard — a widely used conservative benchmark that counts key votes and cosponsors aligned with Heritage positions — lists Lee on its 119th scorecard, implying he scores well by that standard; Heritage measures members by whether they voted and sponsored bills aligned with conservative priorities [2] [5]. Conservative‑oriented rankings (for example CPAC/Center for Legislative Accountability noted in reporting) also track similar patterns, reinforcing that Lee is seen as a reliably conservative vote within the GOP conference [7].
3. Cross‑issue contrast: low marks from labor and environmental groups
Labor and environmental advocacy organizations give Lee poor ratings: the League of Conservation Voters catalogs him under “Anti‑environment Votes,” and AFL‑CIO’s legislator scorecard frames his voting as “voted against working people” in contexts they track — a mirror image of Heritage’s positive placement and a common way to compare him with other Republicans who may be more moderate on certain labor or environmental items [3] [4].
4. Behavioral patterns that distinguish him from other Republicans
GovTrack’s 2024 report card notes Lee “joined bipartisan bills the 2nd least often compared to Senate Republicans,” indicating that among Senate conservatives he is particularly resistant to bipartisan compromise and more likely to vote strictly along a conservative, often procedural or filibuster‑leveraging, approach [8]. That behavioral metric separates him from some Senate Republicans who register more bipartisan co‑sponsorships or votes [8].
5. What vote totals and high‑profile votes tell us (examples, not exhaustive)
Congress.gov and Ballotpedia list specific bills Lee sponsored or voted on in 2025 — for instance, Lee sponsoring S.3105 (ISLET Act) and other procedural votes recorded in late 2025 — which shows he’s active on niche policy areas while also participating in high‑visibility procedural fights such as cloture and motions to proceed [9] [10]. Local reporting and historical examples underscore occasions where Lee stood with a small number of senators against large bipartisan margins, demonstrating a pattern of contrarian conservative votes [11].
6. Limits of available reporting and what’s not in the sources
No single source in the supplied set produces a side‑by‑side, numerical 2025 table ranking Lee directly against each named conservative senator across identical metrics (e.g., Heritage score, ACU, missed votes, bipartisan cosponsors). Available sources do provide the building blocks — GovTrack’s ideology and attendance figures, Heritage’s scorecard, LCV and AFL‑CIO scorecards, VoteView/Voteview and other databases — but you must combine them to construct a formal comparative ranking [1] [2] [3] [4] [6].
7. How to make a fair 2025 comparison (practical next steps)
To compare Lee with other conservative senators in 2025, pull the same metrics across senators: GovTrack ideology position and missed‑vote rate, Heritage Action Scorecard percent, ACU/Conservative Review/CPAC rankings, and cross‑checks with progressive/labor/environment scorecards (AFL‑CIO, LCV). The sources above host those datasets or scorecards; assembling them side‑by‑side will show where Lee is more conservative or more combative than colleagues and where he aligns with mainstream Senate Republicans [1] [2] [3] [4] [5].
Sources cited in this piece: GovTrack (ideology, missed votes, report card) [1] [8], Heritage Action Scorecard [2] [5], League of Conservation Voters [3], AFL‑CIO scorecard [4], Congress.gov and Ballotpedia for specific bills and vote records [9] [10], local reporting for illustrative examples (Salt Lake Tribune) [11].