New House Speaker Mike Johnson’s Positions Against Abortion and LGBTQ+ Rights Are Widely Unpopular
By Rob Todaro
After three weeks of disarray without a speaker, House Republicans finally elected Representative Mike Johnson of Louisiana, a staunch Trump ally with a record of championing conservative fiscal and social policies. Before being elected to public office in 2015, Johnson served as an attorney and spokesperson for the Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian Right legal advocacy group that the Southern Poverty Law Center classifies as an anti-LGBTQ+ hate group. During his tenure, Johnson vocally opposed the legalization of same-sex marriage and defended states’ ability to criminalize gay sex.
New Data for Progress polling finds that most likely voters are unfamiliar with Mike Johnson. When asked if they have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of Johnson, a majority of voters (56%) say they “haven’t heard enough to say.” Only 21% of voters have a favorable opinion and 23% have an unfavorable opinion. Similarly, only 21% of voters report hearing “a lot” about Johnson’s election to the speakership.
In addition to his positions on same-sex relationships that are vastly out of step with the American electorate, Data for Progress finds that many other policies Speaker Johnson has endorsed are widely unpopular with voters — including imprisoning doctors who provide abortions, repealing the Affordable Care Act’s protections for people with pre-existing conditions, and pressuring Amazon to sell books on anti-gay conversion therapy.
Recent Data for Progress polling also found that a majority of voters oppose cutting funding for Social Security and Medicare, banning abortion in all 50 states, and voting to overturn the 2020 presidential election — all of which are policy stances and actions that Johnson has taken in the past.
Previous Data for Progress polling also finds that only 8% of voters believe the retirement age should be raised above 67 — a policy that Johnson supports — while 88% believe the retirement age should either stay the same or be reduced.
These new findings reflect that most voters have not heard enough about Johnson to form an opinion about him, yet underscore the unpopularity of the new speaker’s policy preferences and public statements.
Rob Todaro (@robtodaro) is the Communications Director at Data for Progress.
Survey Methodology
From October 27 to 30, 2023, Data for Progress conducted a survey of 1,283 likely voters nationally using web panel respondents. The sample was weighted to be representative of likely voters by age, gender, education, race, geography, and voting history. The survey was conducted in English. The margin of error is ±3 percentage points.