I have read many comments here displaying an intense dislike of Alan Grayson. That's understandable for someone who is your neighbor, or is about to become your father-in-law. But the job of U.S. Representatives and Senators is ultimately to vote, not to lead parades.
What follows is an examination of their voting records, specifically to determine which Representative is more supportive of the Democratic Party. While it's not possible to define, for everyone, what "better" (Democrats) means, it is possible to identify "more" (Democratic) when it comes to votes.
Here are the results of an examination of 294 votes.
Since a vote only slightly tilted toward Democrats counts the same as one where the parties were almost unanimously in opposition to each other, I calculated the averages:
That's what the statistics reveal. But what about each vote's importance? What about each vote's value? A vote on, for example, the ACA, is far more important than a vote on an amendment affecting $500K in spending for one year. And the votes' values will be different. One may be a “Yahoo!!”, another may be “BOOOO!!”, while another is “Meh”. (Far too many will be “I have no idea what you're saying”). I could assign both importance and value to every vote. I could. Which would be utterly useless to anyone else. I can only suggest that people look at votes of particular interest to them. I did identify a few votes I consider notable.
Grayson is more supportive of the Democratic Party than is Murphy. The DSCC is endorsing Murphy. I see that as a policy of leaning toward the "center" - which aggressive Republican politicking has pushed further and further to the "right". I reject that endorsement. Because in choosing Murphy, they are supporting - in the U.S. Senate - the Keystone XL pipeline, more drilling off the coasts, a weakening of the ACA, a continued bloated military and its global war machine....
And policies that are more Republican.
(Murphy's noticeably lower score appears to be due to him leaning more Republican on rollcall votes where Grayson didn't participate, and possibly Grayson leaning more Democratic on votes where Murphy didn't participate).
Strategic voters, if convinced that Grayson will lose to any Republican, will want to vote for Murphy. For myself, I'll remember Charlie Crist, and Charlie Crist. Or, rather, Marco Rubio and Rick Scott.
More boring details.
Data was compiled using Perl and OpenOffice. Vote pages were downloaded from the Congress.gov roll call votes page) to a local drive, then info was extracted using Perl. Generated reports were imported into OpenOffice Calc, then formulas were added, and a few manual counts were made. An extract from the final report (or even the entire report) is available on request; if anyone is interested, I'll place it in a separate diary and provide a link. I'd provide an extract here, but when I do that, there is a loooong empty space between the table and the rest of the diary. The list of roll call votes where one voted Y and the other N is shown below, by year and roll call vote number.
2013:
11, 30, 38, 44, 62, 68, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 87, 89, 105, 117, 140, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 179, 190, 194, 200, 205, 211, 214, 215, 218, 221, 229, 232, 237, 239, 244, 260, 265, 266, 268, 269, 271, 272, 274, 276, 277, 280, 282, 286, 290, 293, 297, 325, 335, 336, 340, 345, 348, 361, 363, 366, 368, 369, 372, 381, 382, 384, 385, 392, 393, 396, 397, 401, 408, 412, 414, 420, 422, 436, 439, 459, 480, 481, 488, 489, 497, 506, 507, 508, 513, 514, 516, 518, 528, 530, 537, 540, 542, 548, 553, 555, 559, 564, 569, 587, 602, 608, 609, 611, 623, 625, 627, 629, 639, 641.
2014:
11, 23, 31, 41, 60, 64, 66, 67, 69, 70, 71, 74, 78, 90, 97, 108, 110, 113, 129, 135, 148, 149, 150, 151, 154, 156, 162, 164, 168, 172, 173, 174, 176, 181, 182, 185, 188, 190, 200, 203, 204, 209, 211, 228, 230, 232, 233, 240, 247, 251, 254, 257, 260, 264, 267, 286, 299, 302, 308, 309, 310, 311, 315, 321, 324, 327, 329, 334, 338, 343, 349, 351, 354, 359, 372, 392, 402, 404, 408, 409, 410, 416, 420, 422, 429, 438, 449, 451, 455, 464, 470, 473, 485, 486, 491, 495, 501, 502, 507, 513, 517, 519, 523, 531, 540, 542, 548, 551, 558, 562, 563.
2015:
9, 13, 14, 16, 22, 33, 37, 41, 50, 56, 62, 68, 73, 75, 78, 82, 83, 89, 94, 99, 103, 104, 119, 122, 135, 136, 137, 139, 152, 158, 173, 182, 184, 185, 186, 203, 204, 224, 228, 232, 239, 245, 260, 262, 269, 276, 279, 282, 298, 305, 309, 313, 317, 321, 327, 332, 335, 340, 342, 343, 344, 350, 356, 358, 360, 369, 375.
And, with year and roll call number,
Grayson’s 10 worst (scoring), Murphy’s 10 best
2015, 99
2013, 290
2014, 164
2014, 74
2015, 119
2014, 232
2014, 162
2014, 267
2014, 264
2013, 268
Grayson’s 10 best (scoring), Murphy’s 10 worst.
2014, 200
2014, 203
2014, 299
2015, 158
2013, 221
2014, 491
2015, 89
2014, 392
2015, 13
2013, 372