Fact check: Which Senate Republicans voted to end the 2018–2019 government shutdown and how many times did they vote?

1. Why one short roll-call paints a broad picture — the Senate’s 81–18 reopening vote

The pivotal Senate roll-call on January 23, 2019, approved a short-term continuing resolution, reopening the government and funding operations through February 8 by an 81–18 margin. That vote shows almost all present senators from both parties supporting the measure; only two Republicans — Sens. Rand Paul and Mike Lee — joined 16 Democrats in voting no, and Sen. John McCain was absent due to medical treatment ^[1]. Framed this way, a reader reasonably concludes that the bulk of Senate Republicans directly voted to end the shutdown on that specific motion, though the motion was temporary and designed to buy additional time for negotiations rather than to settle long-term funding.

2. A narrower definition finds just six Republican senators backing House-ending bills

A February 2019 study identified six Senate Republicans who explicitly supported the House’s funding bills aimed at ending the shutdown, naming figures including Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and Cory Gardner among them ^[2]. This narrower count treats “voted to end the shutdown” as voting in favor of the particular House-passed appropriations measures rather than the Senate’s short-term continuing resolution. The study’s framing captures a subset of Senate action where support for the House approach — as opposed to a Senate-managed stopgap — was interpreted as a discrete act to end the shutdown under the terms the House proposed.

3. Reconciling the two counts: different votes, different meanings

The apparent conflict between an 81–18 Senate vote and a claim of six Republican senators stems from differences in which votes are being tallied. The 81–18 tally refers to a single Senate procedural/continuing-resolution vote that reopened government operations temporarily and drew broad bipartisan support ^[1]. The “six Republicans” figure tracks Senate votes that aligned with specific House funding proposals or reflected publicized support for House-brokered solutions ^[2]. Both counts are factual within their definitions: one measures immediate bipartisan consent on a stopgap, the other records explicit Senate Republican endorsement of House-passed packages aimed at a longer or different resolution.

4. Missing or ambiguous data and how accounts diverge

Public summaries and retrospective analyses sometimes omit fine-grained distinctions between votes or conflate Senate and House actions, creating ambiguity about who “ended” the shutdown. Some sources provide only high-level timelines — the shutdown ran from December 22, 2018, to January 25, 2019 — without attaching names to specific votes ^[3]. This absence of uniform framing leads to divergent tallies: a coverage focusing on the final Senate reopening vote will list a large number of Republicans as voting to end the shutdown, while analytic work examining alignment with House funding strategy will produce a much smaller roster of Republican supporters ^[3].

5. Motives, messaging, and possible partisan framings to watch

Different actors had incentives to emphasize one count over another. Republican leaders seeking to portray bipartisan Senate unity highlighted the 81–18 reopening vote ^[1]. Conversely, critics of the administration or of Senate negotiation tactics highlighted the smaller set of Republicans who backed House bills to suggest limited GOP willingness to accept House terms ^[2]. These are competing narratives built on the same legislative record; the factual record supports both claims when the precise votes and definitions are specified. Noting this helps explain why contemporary and retrospective accounts diverge.

6. Bottom line: specify the vote before citing a number

If the question asks which Senate Republicans “voted to end” the shutdown, the answer must specify the vote: the January 23 Senate continuing-resolution vote reopened the government with most Republicans voting yes and only Sens. Rand Paul and Mike Lee voting no ^[1]. If the question instead means “which Senate Republicans supported House bills that would have ended the shutdown,” the documented count is six Senators, including Collins, Murkowski, and Gardner, per a February 2019 study ^[2]. Both are correct within their contexts; the variance is not an error but a matter of which legislative action is being counted.