The MAGA Scorecard: How House Republicans Vote With Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene

Despite a disappointing performance for Republicans in the 2022 midterm elections, and the MAGA ideology being unpopular among Americans and within the party itself, the MAGAfication of Republicans in Congress continues to metastasize at an alarming rate. Elected for the first time in 2020, leading MAGA extremist Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) has risen through the ranks of American politics at lightning speed, using the support of far-right media and activists to exert influence over the entire House Republican Conference—from its leadership to rank-and-file members. As the analysis below shows, 92 percent of the conference has voted with Rep. Greene more than 90 percent of the time in the 118th Congress through July 14, 2023, underscoring the extent to which Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives are voting in lockstep with the MAGA movement. Despite her fringe views and extreme ideas, Rep. Greene has amassed unprecedented power to push legislation that affects the American people in radical new ways.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s rise in the House Republican Conference

Just three years ago, House Republican leadership—including current House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA), and Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-MN), who were then in the minority—were quick to denounce then-candidate Greene in June of 2020 when a string of racist, antisemitic, and Islamophobic videos made by the now congresswoman were unearthed, including one in which she said Black people should be “proud” of Confederate monuments. Many Georgia Republicans in the House quickly endorsed her primary opponent, and one Georgia congressman reversed his endorsement of Rep. Greene soon after that story broke. Today, Speaker McCarthy counts Rep. Greene as one of his closest allies and recently went so far as to say that she was “one of the best members we have … and one of the strongest legislators. I support Marjorie Greene very strongly.”

Rep. Greene was “courted” and received significant financial support from the House Freedom Caucus (HFC) and its members. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH)—deputy chair of the HFC, and founding member and former chair of the caucus—staunchly supported her through many controversies in both of her elections and in protests against the Biden administration. Yet, in July 2023, Rep. Greene was kicked out of the HFC for being too aligned with Speaker McCarthy. But recent divisions within the HFC over Rep. Greene’s alliance with House leadership are not the result of her moderating her views; they are instead the byproduct of a handful of conflicting personalities—not differences on policy. This analysis underscores that the ideology of House leadership and the average Republican member of Congress has shifted toward Rep. Greene’s extreme MAGA ideas and demonstrates how House Republicans have grown more tolerant of her unacceptable and unethical behavior.

Since House Republican leaders first denounced Rep. Greene in 2020, more has come to light about her past, and she continues to take increasingly dangerous positions. These include:

• In February 2023, Rep. Greene seemingly called for a form of secession, saying, “We need a national divorce. We need to separate by red states and blue states.”
• In the past six months, Rep. Greene has introduced legislation to expunge the two impeachments of former President Donald Trump and start impeachment proceedings for President Joe Biden, several Cabinet-level officials, and the FBI director.
• Rep. Greene has led an effort to defund federal law enforcement.
• She supports a total ban on abortion and opposes rape and incest exceptions in abortion bans, at one point calling one of her colleagues, who is a rape victim herself, “trash” for supporting these exceptions.
• In June of 2022, Rep. Greene proposed firearms training for children as one solution to the increase of school shootings, saying, “I think children should be trained with firearms. I definitely do. I think that’s very important” in response to a question after repeatedly opposing any form of restriction on firearms.
• She continues to oppose support for Ukraine’s defense against a ruthless Russian invasion, recently proposing an amendment, which House Republican leadership helped bring to the House floor, that would have drastically cut funding for Ukraine.
• Rep. Greene has labeled NATO “not a reliable partner” and called for the United States to withdraw from the 70-year-old alliance.
• She has called for the passage of the Fair Tax, a bill that would create a national sales tax, increasing prices by 30 percent and hitting the middle class especially hard, while supporting tax cuts from the previous administration that gave tax windfalls to the wealthy and big corporations.
• She has proposed raising the retirement age to 70 and converting Medicare into a means-tested voucher program.
• In April 2023, Rep. Greene reiterated her claim that “Democrats are the party of pedophiles” in a 60 Minutes interview.
• In early 2022, Rep. Greene headlined a white nationalist conference organized by Nick Fuentes, a former campaign adviser to Ye—formerly known as Kanye West—and an extreme anti-woman, antisemitic, white supremacist activist, who Rep. Greene called to be reinstated on Twitter as recently as November 2022.
• She was removed from House committees in the 117th Congress for “a pattern of online activity approving of the execution of Democratic leaders and federal agents.”
• Rep. Greene called the Parkland and Las Vegas mass shootings “false flag” operations, saying of Parkland, “I am told that Nancy Pelosi tells Hillary Clinton several times a month that ‘we need another school shooting’ in order to persuade the public to want strict gun control.”
• One week before her election to the House in 2020, Rep. Greene claimed that “the only way you get your freedoms back is it’s earned with the price of blood.”
• She loaned her campaign hundreds of thousands of dollars after her then-husband’s construction company received a now-forgiven PPP loan worth more than $183,000.
• One week after the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, Rep. Greene labeled her Democratic colleagues “the enemies to the American people” and said that “they will be held accountable.”

A decade ago, nearly any of these positions would have been disqualifying for a member of Congress. But today, they have helped make Rep. Greene the leader of the MAGA movement in Congress, and by extension, the House Republican Conference. As this analysis makes clear, the vast majority of the party’s rank and file are following her lead. The scorecard below outlines how often House Republicans have voted with Rep. Greene in the 118th Congress, along with some key takeaways.

MAGA scorecard: House Republicans and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene

In the 118th Congress, 92 percent of the House Republican Conference has voted with Rep. Greene 90 percent or more of the time. In fact, Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) is the only House Republican to vote with Rep. Greene less than 86 percent of the time, at 70 percent.

Among all House Republicans, 23 represent districts that the Cook Political Report considers competitive for the 2024 cycle. All 23 Republicans in these competitive seats have voted with Rep. Greene 85 percent of the time or more. There are 18 Republicans serving in Biden-won seats, and only one has voted with Rep. Greene less than 85 percent of the time—Rep. Fitzpatrick, as noted above.

Five of these representatives come from districts in California, and all five voted with Rep. Greene at least 90 percent of the time. Moreover, four of these seats are in districts President Biden won in the 2020 presidential election.

Five of the competitive seats are in New York state, all of which President Biden won, and all voted with Rep. Greene at least 85 percent of the time.

Among the 15 House Republicans who vote with Rep. Greene most frequently, 13 are part of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus. Speaker McCarthy is one of just two non-Freedom Caucus members on this list, showcasing how both the Freedom Caucus and House Republican leadership are aligned with Rep. Greene’s views. In fact, all five members of the House Republican leadership team voted with Rep. Greene at least 91 percent of the time.

Finally, every committee chair in the U.S. House of Representatives has voted with Rep. Greene at least 88 percent of the time, and five of them—House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan, Committee on Homeland Security Chair Mark Green (R-TN), Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chair James Comer (R-KY), Committee on Small Business Chair Roger Williams (R-TX), and Budget Committee Chair Jodey Arrington (R-TX)—have voted with her at least 94 percent of the time. A full accounting of House Republicans’ voting records in the 118th Congress compared with Rep. Greene’s can be viewed in Table 1 below.

Conclusion

The MAGA shift in Congress among Republicans started as far back as 2010, magnified by the election of President Trump in 2016, and now supercharged by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s actions—and her colleagues’ acceptance and overt support of her extreme positions. The House Republican shift toward this MAGA extremism has been led and overtly approved by Speaker McCarthy himself. The result has been a more extreme agenda, which rank-and-file Republican members are voting for en masse.

Methodology

This analysis examined all floor roll-call votes taken in the House of Representatives during the 118th Congress through July 14, 2023, using data from the Voteview Congressional Roll-Call Votes Database. Percentages were calculated by identifying the number of House floor roll-call votes—excluding quorum calls and vacated votes—each  member of the Republican Conference has taken that has matched Rep. Greene’s vote divided by the number of total votes each House Republican has taken in the 118th Congress. If Rep. Greene or the compared representative voted present or did not vote at all, those votes were thrown out of the calculation.