Elon Musk’s Popularity Plummets Among Republicans & Democrats Since DOGE Role Was Announced, New Poll Finds

Tech billionaire and leader of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) Elon Musk‘s popularity has seen a significant bipartisan decrease since the start of President Donald Trump’s second term. The Economist/YouGov poll asked whether people want Musk to have “a little” or “a lot” of influence in the Trump administration, which has seen a near flip across the surveyed Republicans since the November 2024 election.

In the previous poll conducted by Economist/YouGov, 47% of surveyed Republicans wanted Musk to have “a lot” of influence, while 29% wanted him to have “a little” and 12% said not at all. Today, 26% of Republicans say they want Musk to have “a lot” of influence, and 43% say they want him to have only “a little.” The surveyed Republicans that want him to have no influence “at all” increased by 5%.

Musk’s tightening grip on government systems has Republicans alarmed and questioning how much power the unelected Tesla and SpaceX CEO has.

The White House has named Musk an unsalaried “special government employee” directed by President Donald Trump to eliminate wasteful government spending.

In the past week, DOGE has moved to access payment systems and American workers’ personal data from the U.S. Treasury. It has moved against over many other agencies, including the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which Musk is seeking to dismantle.

“Whatever DOGE is doing, it is certainly not what democracy looks like, or has ever looked like in the grand history of this country, because democracy does not work in the shadows, democracy does not skirt the rule of law,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. He referred to DOGE as a “shadow government” many times, insisting that it is conducting a hostile takeover of the Trump administration.