“While this political stalemate is notably historic, it can also feel a bit inside baseball. It got me wondering how Republican voters are feeling about the party and its leadership as a whole. It’s a bit too early to have polling on this week’s dramatics, but some recent surveys have captured the general mood of Republicans heading into the vote for speaker. In a late November poll from Deseret News/HarrisX, Republicans were pretty evenly split on whether they thought McCarthy should continue to be a party leader: Thirty-five percent said he should maintain his role as a leader, 33 percent said the party should move on from McCarthy, and 32 percent said they were unsure or didn’t know. This ambivalence about McCarthy stood in contrast to Republicans’ feelings toward other party leaders, which were much more cohesive. Most Republicans said that former President Donald Trump should remain a leader and that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell ought to be replaced. Similarly, in another poll from November fielded by The Economist/YouGov, 39 percent of Republicans said McCarthy should remain a leader in the House, but a slim majority (51 percent) said they either didn’t know or didn’t care.
It’s not that McCarthy is wildly unpopular among Republicans, but he’s not exactly a fan favorite, either. In that Economist/YouGov poll, 45 percent of Republicans viewed McCarthy favorably, compared to 31 percent who viewed him unfavorably — not great, but not as bad as, say, McConnell, who had a 55 percent unfavorable rating amongst his party. A CNN/SSRS poll in December found McCarthy’s net approval was +30 points among Republicans, the second-lowest same-party net favorability among all first-time potential speakers in nearly three decades. That same poll also found 15 percent of Republicans had “never heard of” McCarthy, while 28 percent had no opinion of him. And the GOP rank and file’s relatively lukewarm feelings for McCarthy may be emboldening right-wing dissenters to continue their crusade against his speakership — polling suggests voters won’t be fussed too much whether McCarthy is speaker or not.”