Last year, for the second time since National Journal started scoring votes, the most liberal Republican in the Senate was still to the right of the most conservative Democrat:

Even Nebraska’s Ben Nelson, the most conservative Democrat in the rankings, produced an overall voting record slightly to the left of the most moderate Republicans last year: Ohio’s George Voinovich and Maine’s Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe. The Senate had been that divided only once before, in 1999.

That statistic will probably complicate Ben Nelson’s effort to persuade Nebraskans that he’s really a conservative.