Dole with Bush 88 percent of the time

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole has voted with President Bush 88 percent of the time.

Recent ads by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and press releases from the Kay Hagan campaign have repeatedly said that Dole votes with Bush 92 percent of the time.

Hagan has even launched a "92 Days, 92 Ways Dole is Wrong for North Carolina" daily release tied to the figure.  

But a representative of Congressional Quarterly said today that number is incorrect because it improperly averages the yearly scores it gives members of Congress.

That's because the editors of the Washington-based news service use a different number of votes in their calculations each year based on whether the president had a clear position before the vote was taken.

(Imagine that a senator voted with Bush 100 percent of the time on 10 votes and 50 percent of the time on 20 votes. The average would not be 75 percent, or 150 divided by 2, but 66 percent, or 20 out of 30.)

Congressional Quarterly recently calculated the overall vote scores during the entire Bush administration including votes cast up until the August recess, which have not been available to now.

That score shows Dole four percentage points lower than the DSCC has claimed.