THE WASHINGTON POST: Polls show views souring on Elon Musk as Donald Trump’s wingman

There are already signs that Elon Musk’s marriage of convenience to President Donald Trump could be a fraught union.

Musk turned more than a few heads by taking the lead on defeating a government spending bill last month — Trump doesn’t like being overshadowed — and undercutting a just-announced White House artificial-intelligence project last week.

In between, he got into a heated online battle with the more nationalistic elements of the MAGA movement.

Through it all, Musk doesn’t appear to have lost appeal among a GOP base that has embraced him as one of their own, despite his recent political conversion.

But there are increasing signs that the American people writ large don’t have a ton of patience for a second billionaire — this one unelected — wielding such power over politics.

Musk is hardly a pariah, but he is viewed increasingly sceptically.

An AP-NORC poll last week is the latest among several surveys that have shown Musk’s image deteriorating in recent months, to the point where 36 percent of Americans had a favourable opinion of him and 52 percent had an unfavourable one.

That negative 16-point split was down from minus 10 (41-51) last month.

That poll is generally among the worst for Republicans, but it’s the fourth poll of late to show Musk’s image underwater by double digits. And virtually every poll that has tested Musk repeatedly shows him losing at least some ground.

• A Wall Street Journal poll last week showed Musk 11 points underwater (40 per cent saw him favourably vs. 51 per cent who viewed him unfavourably), compared with an even split (45-45) in October. In the poll, Musk was more unpopular than any of Trump’s Cabinet nominees tested, including now-Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, as well as Vice President JD Vance.
• A recent Reuters-Ipsos poll showed Musk 18 points underwater — 38 per cent favourable to 56 per cent unfavourable. Another Ipsos poll a month before showed him 10 points underwater.
• An NBC News poll in September showed him 11 points underwater (34-45), the culmination of a steady deterioration since 2021.
• A Quinnipiac University poll last month put him just five points underwater (39-44). But that’s compared with being slightly above water (36-33) in late 2022.
• A recent Marist College poll for NPR and “PBS NewsHour” revealed that Musk was nine points underwater (37-46). (It appears to be the first time the poll tested him.)

About the only recent high-quality poll in which Musk isn’t underwater is the latest Economist-YouGov poll (46-46). But it, like most of these others, still showed him in double-digit negative territory with independents (38-52) and moderates (41-52).

And while we wait for more data, there is a very logical explanation here: Americans don’t love the idea of the world’s richest man throwing his weight around.

For instance, the Quinnipiac poll showed that, while people viewed Musk negatively by five points, they opposed giving him “a prominent role in the Trump administration” by a wider margin: 12 points. (Trump has named Musk to a commission aimed at promoting government efficiency.)

The AP-NORC poll showed that Americans disliked the idea of the president relying on a billionaire for policy advice, 60-12.

And perhaps tellingly, the Wall Street Journal poll asked whether appointing Musk and the other proposed head of the commission, Vivek Ramaswamy (who has since stepped away), was a good or a bad idea. Nearly twice as many respondents said it was a “very bad idea” (43 per cent) as said it was a “very good idea” (23 per cent).

In other words, the political middle seems to have soured on Musk, and even some of those who do like him don’t seem to love the idea of him flanking Trump for the next four years and having such an influential perch.

We’re not at the point where he’s an obvious liability, and having Musk on the team certainly benefits Trump in other ways — including the amount of money Musk has been throwing around on his behalf.

But it’s certainly a subplot worth watching, particularly as Trump has surrounded himself with so many billionaires and Democrats have begun lodging “oligarch” attacks.

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