Which Candidates Are Ignoring One Job To Get Another ?

 There are five of the presidential candidates that currently hold a seat in the United States Senate -- Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Lindsey Graham, and Bernie Sanders.

Both being a senator and being a presidential candidate are time-consuming jobs. How well are these candidates doing both of those jobs? Are they ignoring their elected position to run for a bigger elected position, or are they doing both fairly well. It turns out that three of them are missing a lot of votes to campaign for their party's nomination (Rubio, Graham, and Cruz), while two are doing a very good job of being both a senator and a presidential candidate (Sanders and Paul). Here's the tally by NBC News:

Marco Rubio

• Announcement: April 13, 2015
• Missed Votes: 59
• Percentage: 42%

Lindsey Graham**

• Announcement: June 1, 2015
• Missed Votes: 39
• Percentage: 48%

Rand Paul 

• Announcement: April 7, 2015
• Missed Votes: 4
• Percentage: 3%

Ted Cruz

• Announcement: March 23, 2015
• Missed Votes: 57
• Percentage: 29%

Bernie Sanders

• Announcement: March 26, 2015
• Missed Votes: 7
• Percentage: 4%

It turns out that Rubio has missed the most votes (closely followed by Cruz), while Graham has missed the highest percentage of votes since declaring his candidacy. Both Sanders and Paul, no matter what you think of their politics, should be commended for missing very few votes while running for president.

(The caricatures above of Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham are by DonkeyHotey.)