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Republican voters approve of their party’s sacking of Liz Cheney

Despite her right-leaning record, it is the party’s liberal and moderate wing that supports her

THERE IS NO better sign of the Republican Party’s unconditional embrace of Donald Trump than its ousting of Liz Cheney, a staunchly conservative congresswoman from Wyoming who nonetheless believes Joe Biden legitimately won the 2020 election. On May 12th Republicans in the House of Representatives voted to remove her from her leadership post after she publicly disagreed with Mr Trump’s conspiracy theories. Elise Stefanik, a moderate congresswoman from New York, is her probable replacement.

The decision is unlikely to bother many Republican voters. According to a new poll by YouGov in partnership with The Economist, 18% of Republican voters and Independents who lean towards the GOP say they have a favourable opinion of Ms Cheney. A much larger portion, 61%, have an unfavourable one. Ms Stefanik’s numbers, in contrast, are significantly better; 34% rate her favourably whereas just 13% have an unfavourable view. A much larger share, 53%, say they have no opinion of Ms Stefanik at all. Only 21% said the same about Ms Cheney.

Such attitudes appear to have less to do with ideology than party loyalty. Conservative Republicans rate Ms Cheney worse, and Ms Stefanik better, than moderate or liberal party members. And yet Ms Cheney’s voting record should endear her to the party’s most hard-core devotees. According to DW-NOMINATE, a measure developed by political scientists to score the ideologies of legislators on a scale from -1 (most liberal) to 1 (most conservative) using their voting records in Congress, Ms Stefanik earns a rating of 0.23. Ms Cheney’s score, by comparison, is 0.52. This suggests that conservative policy goals no longer matter much to most voters. Instead, they listen to cues sent by their party leaders, including Mr Trump, who has called Ms Cheney “a warmonger, and a person with absolutely no personality or heart.”

“I will not sit back and watch in silence while others lead our party down a path that abandons the rule of law,” Ms Cheney said on the House floor on May 11th before her imminent removal, “and joins the former president’s crusade to undermine our democracy.” As conservative Republicans signalled their fealty to Mr Trump the next day, they confirmed Ms Cheney’s fears about the direction of her party.

For more insights from The Economist/YouGov survey, visit our interactive page that tracks what America thinks.

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