A scant 33 percent of US adults now consider Musk to be “very or somewhat favorable” as of April, according to the survey, which was carried out in collaboration with the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. This is a remarkable reversal, as Musk was nearly universally adored prior to his difficult transition into bitter reactionary politics.
Even Republicans who responded to the survey are following the trend, falling from 21 percent to 25 percent negative between December and April. This suggests that even the group of voters Musk has been courting since President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign is growing weary of his unrelentingly rude actions.
The survey supports earlier conclusions that Musk’s popularity plummeted when he literally and figuratively cut the government budget with a chainsaw.
His reckless and faulty strategy has proved to be very unpopular, threatening to deprive millions of people of their Social Security benefits, putting millions more at danger of poverty and hunger, and snatching money away from well-liked programs like life-saving medical research.
According to the most recent survey, Elon Musk has “too much” influence on the US federal government, which has a negative impact on his favorability.
Musk’s support of radical ideologies has also caused a great deal of division, as seen by his repeated Nazi salutes, Holocaust jokes, and appearances at far-right nationalist party gatherings in Europe.
His actions have sparked a whole campaign against his electric vehicle manufacturer, Tesla, with hundreds of dealerships both within and outside the US being targeted by numerous, mostly nonviolent demonstrators.
Given the enormous amount of goodwill the businessman had garnered earlier in his career, Musk’s decline in popularity is startling. In only a few short years, Musk—once hailed for his revolutionary contributions to the automobile and space industries—has turned into one of the world’s most divisive and controversial figures.
Musk’s net favorability has fallen from a dazzling +29 in 2016, when Trump was elected for the first time, to its present lows, where he is seen as a model of out-of-touch riches and greed, according to polling averages compiled by statistician Nate Silver.
According to the AP, one responder, a 75-year-old Pennsylvania retiree, said, “He thinks you run a government like you run a business,” “You don’t do that either. One is for the people’s benefit, while the other is for the company’s profit.