Policy discussion
The text of this post is on X; follow the source link to read it.
Oct 18, 2026 · Posts on X (state legislators) · policy discussion; Government Operations and Politics · Source
$4,000
in itemized contributions in the 2026 cycle, in the bottom tenth of State Senate Republicans
The median for State Senate Republicans is $46.2K. Ranks 849th of 936, where 1st raised the most. 0 itemized donors.
Itemized contributions reported to the state in the 2026 cycle, ranked among State Senate Republicans. State filings leave small gifts out, and totals depend on whether the seat is up this cycle.
At a glance
4 measures against State Senate Republicans. McDaniel missed 5.5% of 803 roll calls, attendance in the bottom quarter of the Kentucky Senate (average 97.0%). McDaniel voted against the majority of Kentucky Senate Republicans 16 times; party unity 95.5%, in the bottom half of the Kentucky Senate (average 95.3%).
The measures on which McDaniel sits furthest from the middle of State Senate Republicans, each against the same group, with the CSIP score when there is one. Every number is explained in its own section below.
Itemized, 2026
$4,000
State Senate Republicans’ median $46.2K · ranks 849th of 936
Attendance
94.5%
Kentucky Senate average 97.0% · ranks 31st of 38 · 803 roll calls
Party unity
95.5%
Kentucky Senate average 95.3% · ranks 28th of 38 · 16 votes against the majority of Kentucky Senate Republicans
CSIP ideology
+0.40
More conservative than 56% of State Senate Republicans · ± 0.05
Statements
10
10 posts on X
Roll calls
803
Compared with Kentucky Senate
Peer group: State Senate Republicans. Rank 1 is the highest value in the group; the thick bar is McDaniel, the thin grey bar the peer average. The headline is the measure on which McDaniel is most unusual among peers (Methods, §08).
What McDaniel says
McDaniel attacks opponents personally less than 76% of State Senate Republicans. Personal attacks in 0% of 10 statements, against 2.3% for the average State Senate Republican; 272nd of 354.
An AI model reads each of McDaniel’s 10 statements in the KY 2025–26 session (10 posts on X) and marks the kinds of statement it contains: a personal attack, criticism of a policy, discussion of policy, bipartisanship, credit claiming, and extreme labels. A statement can carry several. Every rate is compared with the average for State Senate Republicans and ranked among them.
Kinds of statement
Share of statements carrying each label, the KY 2025–26 session
0%80%
McDaniel
Peers
Rank
Credit claiming4 statements
40%
15%
16th of 354
Policy discussion3 statements
30%
37%
230th of 354
Policy criticism1 statements
10%
9%
129th of 354
Bipartisanship1 statements
10%
2%
9th of 354
Personal attacks0 statements
0%
2%
272nd of 354
Show the data
| Row | McDaniel | Peers |
|---|---|---|
| Credit claiming | 40% | 15% |
| Policy discussion | 30% | 37% |
| Policy criticism | 10% | 9% |
| Bipartisanship | 10% | 2% |
| Personal attacks | 0% | 2% |
10
statements classified
10 posts on X.
Show the data
| Part | Value |
|---|---|
| posts on X | 10 |
How to read the bars
The thick bar is McDaniel; the thin grey bar is the average State Senate Republicans. A longer thick bar means McDaniel does this more than peers. Rank 1 is the highest rate in the group.
Extreme labels
McDaniel used no extreme labels in 10 statements. The peer average is 1.3%.
No extreme labels in this window.
Who gets the labels
Targets named alongside an extreme label, by number of statements
No targets recorded.
What an extreme label is
Calls a politician, a party or a policy “far left”, “far right”, “MAGA”, “extreme”, “radical”, “woke”, “fascist” or “communist”. The target is who or what the label was aimed at. The lists show the five most used labels and targets; the toggle shows the rest.
Month by month
Share of statements per month, the KY 2025–26 session
No month in this window has 10 or more statements, too few to chart month by month.
How to read the strips
Each row is one kind of statement; each cell is a month, shaded against that row’s own peak (darker = closer to the peak), with the peak and the latest value written at the right. The top row counts statements. The strip covers every month of the KY 2025–26 session, the same span as the rates above, including months with no statements. A month with fewer than 10 statements is hatched, not shaded: one or two posts would swing its rate to 0% or 100%. 22 months are hatched here; 18 of them have no statements.
In McDaniel’s words
Real statements from the classifier’s example set, with the labels it assigned
Credit claiming
The text of this post is on X; follow the source link to read it.
Jan 22, 2025 · Posts on X (state legislators) · credit claiming · Source
Bipartisanship
The text of this post is on X; follow the source link to read it.
Nov 1, 2025 · Posts on X (state legislators) · bipartisanship · Source
Examples by category
Up to five recent statements in each category
Overtly questions a named person’s character, integrity or loyalty, or calls them names. Criticising a record or a policy does not count.
No statements in this category in this window.
All 10 statements
Newest first, the KY 2025–26 session
The full feed
Five statements at a time, newest first; filters apply to the statements loaded so far. Export saves the statements that match. Sources: 10 posts on X.
Policy
Government Operations and Politics is what McDaniel talks about most: 67% of policy statements, 4.0 times the peer share. Peers give it 17%.
Each policy statement is tagged by the AI model with one or more of 25 policy areas from the Congressional Research Service list, so the shares say what McDaniel talks about. The bills McDaniel sponsors and cosponsors carry the same areas, so the two can be compared.
What McDaniel talks about
Share of policy statements by area, the KY 2025–26 session
0%73%
McDaniel
Peers
Government Operations and Politics2 statements
67%
17%
Economics and Public Finance1 statements
33%
12%
Agriculture and Food0 statements
0%
6%
Armed Forces and National Security0 statements
0%
6%
Civil Rights and Liberties, Minority Issues0 statements
0%
5%
Show the data
| Row | McDaniel | Peers |
|---|---|---|
| Government Operations and Politics | 67% | 17% |
| Economics and Public Finance | 33% | 12% |
| Agriculture and Food | 0% | 6% |
| Armed Forces and National Security | 0% | 6% |
| Civil Rights and Liberties, Minority Issues | 0% | 5% |
How to read the bars
The thick bar is the share of McDaniel’s policy statements in an area; the thin grey bar is the average share for State Senate Republicans. A statement counts once in each of its areas, so shares can add to more than 100%. The five largest areas are shown; the toggle shows the rest.
Talks about · legislates on
Left: share of statements by policy area. Right: share of bills. Areas in order of their share of statements; both sides run from 0 to 73%. Grey ticks are the State Senate Republicans averages.
No sponsored or cosponsored bills with a policy area in this window.
What agreement means, and what it doesn’t
Agreement is 1 minus the distance between the two distributions (Jensen–Shannon): 1 means McDaniel legislates on exactly the areas McDaniel talks about, in the same proportions; 0 means no overlap. It does not say whether the bills match the positions in the statements, only the subjects. Bills McDaniel sponsored count fully, cosponsored bills a quarter. Shown with at least 20 policy statements and 5 bills.
Ideology
McDaniel sits at +0.40 on the CSIP scale, right of 0, more conservative than 56% of State Senate Republicans. Approximate range +0.34 to +0.45, which understates the uncertainty; from 357 donors and 439 roll calls.
CSIP, the lab’s Common-Space Ideal Point, places every official, federal and state, on one left–right scale, estimated from roll-call votes, who gives money to whom, and the text of statements. Negative is left of 0, positive right of it; 0 is the centre of the scale, not a definition of “moderate”.
+0.40
CSIP ideal point
Approximate range +0.34 to +0.45. From 357 donors and 439 roll calls. Run 2026-10-25T215945. Blue is left of 0, red right of 0.
The outlined dot is McDaniel, coloured by its side of 0 (blue left, red right, deeper further out); the bar through it is the approximate range (±1.96 standard errors), which understates the uncertainty; the grey ticks below are the medians of McDaniel’s groups. 0 is the centre of the scale, not “moderate” by definition.
What this means, and what it doesn’t
The score summarises how an official votes, who funds them and how they talk, relative to everyone else. It does not grade positions as good or bad, and two officials with the same score can differ on any single issue. The ± range is 1.96 standard errors, which understates the uncertainty: scores whose ranges overlap may not differ at all, and even scores whose ranges do not overlap may not differ.
Where McDaniel sits
Every official in each group, on the CSIP scale
State Senate Republicans1,083 · median +0.4
Kentucky Senate38 · median +0.5
All State Senate1,909 · median +0.1
Show the data
| Group | Officials | Median | Share left of McDaniel |
|---|---|---|---|
| State Senate Republicans | 1083 | +0.4 | 56% |
| Kentucky Senate | 38 | +0.5 | 34% |
| All State Senate | 1909 | +0.1 | 75% |
How to read the strips
Every small dot is one official on the same scale, coloured by its own score (blue left of 0, red right of 0, grey at 0, deeper further out) and spread up and down only to keep dots apart; where a group is crowded the dots overlap, and darker patches mean more officials. The large outlined dot is McDaniel in every row; the rule is each group’s median. The table under the figure gives the share of each group to the left of McDaniel.
Money
McDaniel reported $4,000 in the 2026 cycle, 8.7% of the State Senate Republicans’ median of $46.2K. State filings report no small-donation total.
Campaign money from state campaign-finance filings, as aggregates only; the lab never shows an individual donor. Campaigns must report by name every person who gives them more than $200 in a cycle (“itemized”); smaller gifts are reported only as one total (“unitemized”), so donor counts, donor states, employers and occupations describe itemized donors only. State filings report no small-gift total, so these figures add up itemized contributions only.
$4,000
itemized in the 2026 cycle
From 0 itemized donors. State Senate Republicans’ median $46.2K.
Where the money came from
Each square is one percent of itemized contributions in the 2026 cycle.
- PACs and other committees100 squares$4,000
Show the data
| Source | Amount | Share |
|---|---|---|
| PACs and other committees | $4,000 | 100.0% |
What this means, and what it doesn’t
Totals say how much a campaign took in, not how it was spent, and they rise sharply when a seat is up for election; compare cycles with that in mind.
Receipts by cycle
Itemized contributions, 2020 to 2026. The grey line is the State Senate Republicans’ median for 2026.
Show the data
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| 2020 cycle | $485.5K |
| 2022 cycle | $15.3K |
| 2024 cycle | $416.9K |
| 2026 cycle | $4,000 |
Top donor states, 2026
Itemized contributions by donor state.
No itemized donors with an address.
Small donations
State filings report no total for small gifts.
Not reported in state filings.
Where itemized donors live
Individuals who gave more than $200, by donor state
Show the data
| State | Value |
|---|---|
| Alaska | No data |
| Maine | No data |
| Vermont | No data |
| New Hampshire | No data |
| Washington | No data |
| Idaho | No data |
| Montana | No data |
| North Dakota | No data |
| Minnesota | No data |
| Illinois | No data |
| Wisconsin | No data |
| Michigan | No data |
| New York | No data |
| Rhode Island | No data |
| Massachusetts | No data |
| Oregon | No data |
| Nevada | No data |
| Wyoming | No data |
| South Dakota | No data |
| Iowa | No data |
| Indiana | No data |
| Ohio | No data |
| Pennsylvania | No data |
| New Jersey | No data |
| Connecticut | No data |
| California | No data |
| Utah | No data |
| Colorado | No data |
| Nebraska | No data |
| Missouri | No data |
| Kentucky | No data |
| West Virginia | No data |
| Virginia | No data |
| Maryland | No data |
| Delaware | No data |
| Arizona | No data |
| New Mexico | No data |
| Kansas | No data |
| Arkansas | No data |
| Tennessee | No data |
| North Carolina | No data |
| South Carolina | No data |
| District of Columbia | No data |
| Oklahoma | No data |
| Louisiana | No data |
| Mississippi | No data |
| Alabama | No data |
| Georgia | No data |
| Hawaii | No data |
| Texas | No data |
| Florida | No data |
0
itemized donors
People who gave more than $200
No itemized individual money.
How to read the map
Every state the same size. Darker states gave more itemized money; hatched states had no itemized donors; the outlined state is Kentucky. Gifts of $200 or less carry no address and are left out.
Top donor occupations
Itemized, 2026 cycle.
No occupations reported.
Top committees
PAC and committee contributions, 2026 cycle.
- KENTUCKY BANKER'S COMMITTEE$2,000
- KENTUCKY BEER WHOLESALERS PAC$1,000
- OPTOMETRIC PAC$1,000
Top employers
Itemized, 2026 cycle.
No employers reported.
Aggregates only. Individual donors are never named.
Votes
McDaniel voted with the majority of Kentucky Senate Republicans on 95.5% of party-line votes and missed 5.5% of 803 roll calls. Kentucky Senate on average: 95.3% party unity, 97.0% attendance. Across all roll calls, McDaniel voted against the majority of Kentucky Senate Republicans 16 times.
803 roll calls McDaniel could vote on in the KY 2025–26 session, compared with Kentucky Senate. Attendance is the share with a vote recorded. Party unity counts only party-line roll calls, where most Democrats and most Republicans voted on opposite sides, and is the share of those where McDaniel voted with the majority of Kentucky Senate Republicans. The count of votes against that majority covers every roll call where the majority took a side.
16
votes against the majority of Kentucky Senate Republicans
Party unity 95.5%, Kentucky Senate average 95.3%, ranks 28th of 38. 803 roll calls in the KY 2025–26 session.
Attendance and party unity
The thick bar is McDaniel, the thin grey bar the Kentucky Senate average. The scale runs from 80% to 100% to show the gap.
80%100%
McDaniel
Peers
Rank
Attendance
94.5%
97.0%
31st of 38
Party unity
95.5%
95.3%
28th of 38
Show the data
| Row | McDaniel | Peers |
|---|---|---|
| Attendance | 94.5% | 97.0% |
| Party unity | 95.5% | 95.3% |
What this means, and what it doesn’t
A missed roll call has many causes, from illness to campaigning, so attendance says how often, not why. A vote against the majority can be on procedure as well as substance, and many fall on roll calls where both parties split; the key votes below show the ones that decided something.
Key votes
25 roll calls the lab flagged as key in the KY 2025–26 session
| Party split (yea–nay) | Why it’s key | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 15, 2026 | Yea | With majority | pass | D 5–0 · R 31–0Democrats 5 yea, 0 nay; Republicans 31 yea, 0 nay | became law | |
| Apr 15, 2026 | Yea | With majority | pass | D 5–0 · R 33–0Democrats 5 yea, 0 nay; Republicans 33 yea, 0 nay | became law | |
| Apr 15, 2026 | Yea | With majority | pass | D 5–0 · R 32–0Democrats 5 yea, 0 nay; Republicans 32 yea, 0 nay | became law | |
| Apr 15, 2026 | Yea | With majority | pass | D 5–0 · R 31–1Democrats 5 yea, 0 nay; Republicans 31 yea, 1 nay | became law | |
| Apr 15, 2026 | SJR 116 A JOINT RESOLUTION directing the University of Kentucky, the University of Louisville, and Eastern Kentucky University to coordinate a search for actionable solutions to physician shortages and to explore and expand health care opportunities in medically underserved areas in collaboration with commu FINAL PASSAGE OF SJR 116 w/ HCS 1, HFA 1, HCA 1 (T) | Yea | With majority | pass | D 5–0 · R 32–0Democrats 5 yea, 0 nay; Republicans 32 yea, 0 nay | became law |
How key votes are chosen
Automatically: a final-passage or override vote where the measure became law, the margin was under 10%, at least 10% of either party voted against its majority, or the bill was among the 25 most mentioned in officials’ own statements. Up to 25 per window, most recent first; five are shown. Bars show yea on the left, nay on the right, per party.
Votes most often with
The colleagues who voted the same way as McDaniel most often
- Nick WilsonR413 shared votes99%
- Michael MeredithR409 shared votes99%
- Amanda BledsoeR739 shared votes98%
- Robert StiversR727 shared votes98%
- Jared CarpenterR716 shared votes98%
Votes least often with
The colleagues who voted the same way as McDaniel least often
- Walker ThomasR411 shared votes78%
- Gerald NealD712 shared votes79%
- Gary ClemonsD405 shared votes79%
- Cassie ArmstrongD753 shared votes79%
- Reggie ThomasD341 shared votes79%
How to read the agreement lists
The share of roll calls both members voted on where they voted the same way, among colleagues sharing at least 50 such votes. High agreement with members of the other party is common on routine votes.
Full voting record
KY 2025–26 session, loads in batches
Legislation
No bills for the KY 2025–26 session.No sponsored or cosponsored bills are recorded for this official in this time window.
Online
A site that changed 1 time in 90 days. McDaniel’s official site had 1 page when last crawled on Oct 1, 2026.
The lab crawls McDaniel’s official and campaign websites (weekly for Congress, monthly for the states) and keeps every page’s text, so changes can be read later; it also records social accounts and describes the images McDaniel posts with a vision model.
Websites
Official site
legislature.ky.gov/Legislators/Pages/Legislator-Profile.aspx?DistrictNumber=123Last crawled Oct 1, 2026
1pages crawled
1changes in 90 days
- 41
pages crawled
22changes in 90 days
How to read the counts
“Pages crawled” is the size of the site at the last crawl; “changes in 90 days” counts pages whose text differed from the previous crawl. Sites change for many routine reasons, such as new press releases, so a high count is not by itself notable.
Social accounts
Images McDaniel posted
No images from McDaniel’s posts have been described.
About the descriptions
Written by a vision model and may be wrong. Open the post to see the original. Five are shown; the toggle shows the rest.
State floor speeches
1 turn, Jan 27, 2026 to Jan 27, 2026
Floor speeches
Transcribed from chamber video or captions by the lab. They are not classified for kinds of statement.
Methods and sources
How this page was made. Profile built Oct 28, 2026; site last built Oct 28, 2026. Every number on the page is computed from the sources listed here, by the same rules for every official; nothing is written by hand.
The headline
The headline is the measure on which McDaniel is most unusual among State Senate Republicans, chosen by one rule for every official of every party. The candidates are the rate of each kind of statement and of extreme labels, party unity, attendance, the small-donor share, the in-state share and total receipts of the latest cycle, the share of sponsored bills that got out of committee, talk-to-bills agreement, and the CSIP score’s place within the party group.
The builder ranks every measure within the same peer group the page compares it with, and writes each official’s percentile: the share of the group below the value, ties counting half, so 0.5 is the median and a value shared by many never ranks first. A measure’s score is how far that percentile sits from the median (0 in the middle, 0.5 at either end), and the highest score leads if it is above 0.25, outside the middle half of the group. Scores within 0.03 of each other are a tie, broken in this order: votes against the party majority, kinds of statement, ideology, roll calls missed, small donations, in-state money, legislation, agreement, extreme labels, receipts.
A measure counts only with at least 200 statements, 100 roll calls or 5 sponsored bills behind it and a peer group of at least 10. Two things never lead: high party unity or attendance, where most members sit, and a high rate of a kind of statement backed by fewer than 10 statements. When nothing qualifies, the headline is a neutral fact instead: statements classified, or years in office. The wording always names the direction (“in the bottom 5% of …”, “votes against the majority of …”).
Identifiers
- Profile id
- b32a95c9-42ba-449b-8581-97b9cef73c6a
- Open States
- ocd-person/b32a95c9-42ba-449b-8581-97b9cef73c6a
Bulk files with the same data for every official:
Freshness of this profile’s data
- What politicians sayOct 27, 20261 days agoMembers of Congress: tweets since 2017; press releases, newsletters and floor speeches since 2022. State legislators: tweets since May 2024. Governors: tweets since January 2025. Labels from an LLM classifier.
- Roll calls (state)Oct 21, 20267 days agoOpen States floor roll calls, 2019 on (none for AK and MO).
- Bills (state)Oct 28, 2026todayOpen States bills and sponsors, 2019 on; stages from roll calls.
- Campaign money (state)no dateState campaign-finance agencies, 2019 on; aggregates only.
- Ideology (CSIP)Oct 25, 20263 days agoCommon-Space Ideal Points (CSIP), current validated run.
- WebsitesOct 25, 20263 days agoWeekly crawls of federal sites since April 2026; monthly state crawls since June 2026.
- State floor speechesOct 21, 20267 days agoState floor speech turns (published transcripts and captions), 2020 on; not LLM-classified.
How the measures work
- What politicians say
- Every post, press release, newsletter and congressional floor speech is read by a language model and marked for personal attacks, policy criticism, policy discussion, bipartisanship and credit claiming. A statement can be in several. Rates are shares of statements in the window. The methods paper.
- Extreme labels
- A statement has an extreme label when it calls a politician, party or policy “far left”, “far right”, “MAGA”, “extreme”, “radical”, “woke”, “fascist” or “communist”. The target is who the label is aimed at.
- Policy areas and agreement
- Statements and bills share 25 Congressional Research Service policy areas (state bills are assigned by a language model). Agreement is 1 − Jensen–Shannon distance between the two distributions, shown with at least 20 policy statements and 5 bills.
- Ideology (CSIP)
- Common-Space Ideal Points place federal and state officials on one left–right scale, estimated jointly from roll calls, campaign contributions and the text of statements, with standard errors. Only a validated run is shown. The methods paper.
- Campaign money
- Campaigns report by name only donors who give more than $200 in a cycle; smaller gifts are reported as one total. Federal totals and the small-donor share come from the FEC’s financial summaries of each campaign committee. Donor counts, donor states, employers and occupations cover itemized donors only. State filings report no small-gift totals, so state figures are itemized only. The lab never publishes donor names.
- Votes and key votes
- Attendance, party unity and the count of votes against the majority of an official’s own party come from roll calls (Voteview for Congress, chamber records for the states). Key votes are final-passage or override votes that became law, were decided by under 10%, saw at least 10% of a party vote against its majority, or concerned one of the 25 bills most mentioned in officials’ statements.
- Peers and ranks
- Comparisons are with the same party, chamber and level (for example House Democrats); state legislators are compared within their state and chamber for votes. Every comparison names its group. Rank 1 is the highest value in the group; tied values share the average of their ranks, and the percentile is the share of the group below the value, ties counting half.
America’s Political Pulse · Polarization Research Lab