Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Disdain for Mike Johnson Isn’t Matched Among GOP Voters

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Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-Ga.) threat to try to oust House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has yet to be met with much support on Capitol Hill. And while the Georgia rabble-rouser claims Johnson has irked Republican voters, few across the country have hard feelings about him either — many aren’t even hearing much about him.

According to Morning Consult’s ongoing Political Intelligence tracking, just 16% of Republican voters nationwide dislike Johnson, slightly better than his average standing since he took the speakership in late October. Another 38% hold favorable views, up from 32% when he became speaker, though down slightly from his high-profile moment in the spotlight on the dais at President Joe Biden’s State of the Union Address. 

Due in part to the lack of awareness of Johnson among the GOP's electorate, he’s actually less unpopular than former President Donald Trump or the average Republican in Congress. 

Notably, just 5% of Republican voters nationwide hold “very” unfavorable views of Johnson, compared with 22% who said the same of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), the more famous Republican congressional leader who consistently ranks as one of America’s most unpopular senators at home.

Despite the lack of movement in negative sentiment about Johnson, there are signs in our data that critiques can break through. After Congress passed a spending bill that was panned by House Republicans and Greene’s threats emerged, there was a modest uptick in the share of GOP voters who heard something mainly negative about him (from 13% to 25%). But even then, very few voters took note.

According to our latest survey, 3 in 5 Republican voters nationwide said they had recently seen, read or heard “nothing at all” about Johnson, while 22% heard something positive and 18% heard something negative. That level of negative buzz is in line with the average week for Republicans in Congress since Johnson took the speaker’s gavel, but higher than his average rating by the metric as positive awareness has ticked down a bit.

The bottom line

At this point, there is no organic push against Johnson among Republican voters nationwide, suggesting that nothing he’s done thus far has managed to irk the party’s base. 

But given the lack of awareness about him, there is room for negative energy to grow. This could set up major inflection points if his detractors are able to do the hard work of rallying the Republican base against him on controversial issues like Ukraine funding or, more urgently, the reauthorization of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Consternation over a debt limit deal and Ukraine funding in 2023 weakened then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s standing among GOP voters to a worse point than Johnson’s is now. But even then, more Republican voters held favorable than unfavorable views of him before the California Republican’s eventual ouster. 

At the end of the day, our data suggests the matter is more about internal politics than political pressure on the outside, at least for the moment.