People are turning on Elon Musk

Elon Musk’s popularity with the American public is waning, according to the latest polling average from Nate Silver’s Silver Bulletin. The billionaire CEO of multiple companies wears many hats, but the most visible one of late has been as the face of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), an organization that has been tearing through the US government administrative state.

Silver Bulletin’s average shows that 53.5 percent of Americans have an unfavorable view of Musk, and only 39.6 percent of Americans see him favorably. His unpopularity is way up since the beginning of 2024 when only 38 percent of people disliked him, according to the site’s tracker. Silver writes that his process for tracking Musk’s ratings is similar to how he tracks President Trump’s, but with “slightly more conservative settings as Musk is polled less often than Trump.”

According to Silver Bulletin, negative views of the billionaire have been especially trending upwards in the wake of his heavy support — in part by paying voters — for Trump’s second Presidential campaign and, not long after, the beginning of his work at DOGE. That work has seen widespread federal agency layoffs as DOGE’s operatives access, or attempt to gain access, to sensitive areas of the government, including IRS records, the US Treasury’s payments system, and the US Social Security Administration.

However accurate Silver Bulletin’s average is, the site is not alone in noting Musk’s unpopularity. Outlets like Fox News, Politico, and Axios have all recently pointed to polls showing a growing distaste for the billionaire.

That may have already had electoral consequences for Republicans in Wisconsin, where Musk’s attempt to bolster a conservative Supreme Court candidate this month — using the same voter-paying tactics he used during Trump’s campaign — appear to have backfired. More than half of voters in the state disapproved of his involvement, and about a third said it made them less likely to vote for the conservative justice, according to pollster information published by The Washington Post. In the end, Democrat-backed candidate Susan Crawford won by 10 points, preserving Wisconsin’s highest court’s 4-3 liberal majority.