Tester is the senior senator from Montana and is a Democrat. He has served since Jan 4, 2007. Tester is next up for reelection in 2024 and serves until Jan 3, 2025.
![Photo of Sen. Jon Tester [D-MT]](/static/legislator-photos/412244-200px.jpeg)
Analysis
Legislative Metrics
Read our 2019 Report Card for Tester.
Ideology–Leadership Chart
Tester is shown as a purple triangle ▲ in our ideology-leadership chart below. Each dot is a member of the Senate positioned according to our ideology score (left to right) and our leadership score (leaders are toward the top).
The chart is based on the bills Tester has sponsored and cosponsored from Jan 3, 2017 to Jan 6, 2021. See full analysis methodology.
Ratings from Advocacy Organizations
Enacted Legislation
Tester was the primary sponsor of 24 bills that were enacted. The most recent include:
- S. 785: Commander John Scott Hannon Veterans Mental Health Care Improvement Act of 2019
- S. 3637: A bill to amend the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act to extend lease protections for servicemembers under stop movement orders in response to a local, national, or global emergency, ...
- S. 711: CARE for Reservists Act of 2019
- S. 514: Deborah Sampson Act
- S. 3039: A bill to authorize the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to establish a grant program to conduct cemetery research and produce educational materials for the Veterans Legacy Program, and ...
- S. 2988 (116th): Veteran Pension Protection Act of 2019
- S. 2265: GI Bill Work Study Improvement Act of 2019
Does 24 not sound like a lot? Very few bills are ever enacted — most legislators sponsor only a handful that are signed into law. But there are other legislative activities that we don’t track that are also important, including offering amendments, committee work and oversight of the other branches, and constituent services.
We consider a bill enacted if one of the following is true: a) it is enacted itself, b) it has a companion bill in the other chamber (as identified by Congress) which was enacted, or c) if at least about half of its provisions were incorporated into bills that were enacted (as determined by an automated text analysis, applicable beginning with bills in the 110th Congress).
Bills Sponsored
Issue Areas
Tester sponsors bills primarily in these issue areas:
Armed Forces and National Security (39%) Native Americans (12%) Education (10%) Health (10%) Government Operations and Politics (10%) Taxation (8%) Public Lands and Natural Resources (7%)
Recent Bills
Some of Tester’s most recently sponsored bills include...
Voting Record
Key Votes
Missed Votes
From Jan 2007 to Jan 2021, Tester missed 51 of 4,318 roll call votes, which is 1.2%. This is on par with the median of 1.6% among the lifetime records of senators currently serving. The chart below reports missed votes over time.
We don’t track why legislators miss votes, but it’s often due to medical absenses and major life events.
Primary Sources
The information on this page is originally sourced from a variety of materials, including:
- unitedstates/congress-legislators, a community project gathering congressional information
- The House and Senate websites, for committee membership and voting records
- GPO Member Guide for the photo
- GovInfo.gov, for sponsored bills
