Exclusive poll: Republicans favor Greene over Cheney

Conspiracist Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is far more popular than Rep. Liz Cheney among Americans who align with the Republican Party, according to a new Axios-SurveyMonkey poll.

Why it matters: As the House GOP caucus is being torn over calls to yank Cheney from congressional leadership for backing Donald Trump's second impeachment, and strip Greene from committee assignments for her baseless conspiracy theories and violent rhetoric, these findings show how strongly Trumpism continues to define most Republicans.

• House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is much more popular with Republicans than Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, the survey finds.

By the numbers: McCarthy enjoys the highest favorable versus unfavorable ratings (net favorability) of the four among Republicans, at 38%-16% (+22); followed by Greene, at 28%-18% (+10); McConnell, at 31%-46% (-15); and Cheney, at 14%-42% (-28).

• Greene is the least well known of the four, with 51% of Republicans and Republican leaners saying they don't know enough to say whether their impression is favorable or not. Respondents have the most fully formed views of McConnell.
• Republican respondents are three times as likely to say their views align with Greene than with Cheney, but nearly one-third say they don't align with either, and half say they don't know enough to say.
• Republican respondents who voted for Trump in November gave McCarthy a high net favorable rating (+31) and McConnell a high net unfavorable rating (-18).

The intrigue: People who identify with Greene are disproportionately likely to have lost faith in democracy or believe despite evidence that voter fraud is rampant in their state.

• The survey also finds that Democrats, who have strongly unfavorable opinions of Greene, are far more likely than Republicans to say they know enough about her views to form opinions about her.

What they're saying: SurveyMonkey's Laura Wronski tells Axios the findings highlight the impact of major political figures questioning American democracy and underscore how Republicans disproportionately are "choosing party over the form of government we all rely on."

Methodology: This SurveyMonkey online poll was conducted Feb. 1-2, 2021, among a national sample of 2,691 U.S. adults, including 1,024 who identified as Republican or Republican-leaning.

• Respondents for this survey were selected from the more than 2 million people who take surveys on the SurveyMonkey platform each day.
• The modeled error estimate for this survey is ±3.0 percentage points for the national sample, and ±4.5 for the sample of Republicans and Republican leaners.
• Data have been weighted for age, race, sex, education and geography using the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey to reflect the demographic composition of the United States age 18 and over.