Elon Musk’s support among Democrats has withered to a new low as he has embraced Republican politics, according to a national NBC News poll.
Only 6% of Democrats in the poll, which was conducted Sept. 13-17, said they had positive feelings about Musk, while 79% said they had negative feelings. The numbers were flipped for Republicans, with 62% having positive feelings toward him and 14% negative feelings. Independents were split, 31% to 36%.
The poll shows that views of Musk are increasingly polarized, reflecting the transformation of his public image in recent years from that of an environmentally aware automaker crusading against fossil fuels to that of a conservative activist aligned with former President Donald Trump.
“It’s a damaged brand,” said Jeff Horwitt of Hart Research Associates, the Democratic pollster who conducted the survey with Republican pollster Bill McInturff of Public Opinion Strategies.
“If you didn’t see the name and you just saw the numbers, you’d say he looks like a typical national Republican politician,” Horwitt said.
“But the challenge is that he’s not a Republican politician, and he touches so many parts of American society — our personal lives and government — and this is a real problem to have the ratings of a divisive figure,” he said.
Musk didn’t respond to a request for comment Tuesday.
Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, is the world’s wealthiest person, with a $265 billion net worth, according to Bloomberg. In 2022, he added the social media app X to his business empire, and, in the years since, his changes, such as restoring the accounts of previously banned conspiracy theorists, have resulted in a flourishing of extremist content, including neo-Nazi views.
Musk personally embraced an antisemitic conspiracy theory last year, for which he later said he was sorry. He has spread conspiracy theories propagated by neo-Nazis that Haitian immigrants practice cannibalism and abduct pets, ideas that he continues to stand behind. He has also boosted false claims about nonwhite airline pilots and promoted the idea that immigration leads to civil war.
Overall public support for Musk is negative, with 34% holding positive views and 45% negative views, according to the poll. That’s the worst result for Musk in four separate NBC News polls that have asked about him over three years.
The national NBC News poll released Sunday found Vice President Kamala Harris with a 5-percentage-point lead over Trump with just over six weeks until Election Day.
Public support for Musk fell after he bought X, then known as Twitter, for $44 billion in October 2022.
Before the acquisition, in an August 2021 NBC News poll, the perception was overall positive: 26% of people said they had positive feelings about Musk, compared with 21% negative. Another 33% said they were neutral, and 20% said they didn’t know his name or weren’t sure. Support was positive among independents and Republicans and split among Democrats.
But a shift appeared in an NBC News poll in November 2022, days after Musk bought Twitter, vowing to loosen its rules around speech. Views were net negative, 31% to 35%, with 26% saying they were neutral and 8% saying they didn’t know his name or weren’t sure. Support among Democrats had collapsed to 9% positive and 64% negative.
Musk was one of two nonpoliticians in the latest poll. The other, singer Taylor Swift, was viewed positively by 33% of respondents and negatively by 27%. Swift has endorsed Harris, and Republicans’ views of her have fallen from a 2-point net positive to a 35-point net negative.
“This is where our politics are today: If you take a stand, you’re going to pay a price,” Horwitt said of Musk and Swift.
Many of Musk’s detractors feel very strongly about him: 32% of all respondents said their feelings were “very negative.” Only 17% said their feelings were “very positive.”
Musk rose to notoriety largely by popularizing electric vehicles, starting with the release of the Tesla Model S in 2012, when battery-powered cars and trucks were an afterthought for established automakers. For years he has been a vocal advocate for renewable energy sources, such as solar power.
But now, Musk’s changing public image and his pro-Trump political support are having an impact on Tesla’s customer base and its sales, as some environmentally conscious consumers reconsider their support for him.
In the spring, Tesla’s share of electric vehicle sales in the U.S. fell below 50% for the first time, according to the research firm Cox Automotive.
Horwitt said that as Musk chases a variety of ambitions — including building a colony on Mars — he won’t have the same reservoir of goodwill or broad-based credibility that another business figure might.
“When you’re trying to work with public-private partnerships or the government, it makes it harder for people to work with you when you become such a polarizing figure,” he said.
Musk has endorsed Trump for another term in the White House and organized a Super PAC to try to boost pro-Trump voter turnout in key battleground states. Some political strategists say his backing of Trump has also fired up the Democratic base, including by highlighting Trump’s support for firing workers who go on strike.
The national NBC News poll of 1,000 registered voters — 870 of whom were reached via cellphone — was conducted Sept. 13-17 and has an overall margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.