Americans are generally not pleased with many of the details of DOGE, and Musk's involvement. — AP
THE idea that the government is wasteful and inefficient has been a long-held view by most Americans for decades, surveys have found. And Americans mostly support the concept of the Department of Government Efficiency, commonly referred to as DOGE.
But they generally are not pleased with many of the details, particularly the involvement of billionaire businessperson Elon Musk, according to a New York Times review of polls on the subject. And concern begins to transcend predictable partisan divisions when voters are asked about DOGE’s plans to access sensitive information such as the data the government has on Americans.
When given a broad set of options for whether DOGE should continue, less than 40% of voters said that DOGE should stop its work entirely, according to a March poll by NBC News. But respondents who expressed support for DOGE were split between thinking it should continue at the current pace and thinking it should slow down to assess impact.
When respondents are forced to choose between two options –whether they approve or disapprove of DOGE – as many as 60% of respondents express negative sentiment.
Some pollsters explicitly give respondents the option of saying they are uncertain or have a neutral opinion about DOGE. (Other pollsters accept that answer only if the respondent volunteers it.)
Polls that include this option show slightly less negative sentiment; in other words, respondents who might otherwise have said they disliked DOGE instead answered that they were neutral toward it.
The image of the broad government cuts has become linked with Musk, who is leading the effort and regularly floats plans on X, the social media website he owns, to slash government spending.
The breadth of Musk’s influence has touched off some infighting in Trump’s administration, including during a contentious Cabinet meeting, and has caused some Republicans on Capitol Hill to make direct appeals to Musk to try to limit the effects on their constituents. Trump himself suggested Musk should work with a “scalpel” rather than a “hatchet.”
In a Quinnipiac University poll taken this month, 57% of voters – including 16% of Republicans – said that Musk had too much power in decisions that affect the country.
Views of Musk have taken a hit as well. Over the last four years, he has gone from having a mostly positive approval rating among the voters who had heard of him to a deeply negative one.
Musk’s drop in popularity has come almost entirely from Democrats and independent voters, while his ratings have improved among Republicans.
While many polls about DOGE yield findings with relatively predictable partisan divides, there is at least one area that has elicited broad objection: efforts to access and consolidate data from agencies such as the Social Security Administration and the IRS.
Neary two-thirds of Americans express some concern when asked about the access of Musk’s team to that data. – ©2025 The New York Times Company
This article was originally published in The New York Times.
