WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s dramatic changes to the federal government haven’t emerged as an obvious political winner or loser, according to a new poll that indicates some Americans may be giving him the benefit of the doubt for now on his Department of Government Efficiency.
The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll found that about 4 in 10 U.S. adults “somewhat” or “strongly” approve of Trump’s handling of Social Security and a similar share approve of the way he’s managing the federal government.
Those numbers are almost identical to Trump’s overall presidential approval, suggesting that his Republican administration’s moves to fire thousands of federal workers, close Social Security Administration field offices, effectively shutter entire agencies and cancel thousands of government contracts haven’t yet created a significant independent backlash — or spurred independent support.
Views of Trump and his adviser Elon Musk are still largely intertwined, despite Democrats’ recent focus on Musk. The two men suffered a defeat on Tuesday when the conservative candidate they had endorsed for the Wisconsin Supreme Court was defeated. Musk and the groups he backed spent more than $21 million in the race, the first major test of how voters feel about Musk’s political impact.
The poll, which was conducted before Tuesday’s election, found that both Trump and Musk are viewed more negatively than positively and are largely rated similarly by Americans overall. Very few Americans have a positive view of one man and a negative view of the other.
Immigration emerged in the poll as a relative strength for Trump, while trade relations with other countries appeared to be a relative weakness. Unlike those issues, U.S. adults’ views on Trump’s handling of Social Security and management of the federal government are indistinguishable from his overall approval rating.
This suggests that Americans may have a less developed opinion of Trump’s actions in this area, or they may be waiting to weigh the impact.
There are hints in the poll that Trump’s pledge to cut government spending may be resonating. Closer to half of U.S. adults approve of Trump’s approach to government spending, which is slightly higher than his overall approval rating.
“I love DOGE,” said Adam Marefka, a 42-year-old facilities maintenance specialist from Birmingham, Alabama, and a Trump supporter. “They’re cutting wasteful spending. We need a smaller government, and there’s only one way to do that.”
Others see recklessness. Or, as Paul Vaitkus, of St. Petersburg, Florida, put it: “Total craziness.”
“They’re not going to just trim where it needs to trim,” said Vaitkus, a 66-year-old retired cardiologist. “They’re going to do huge damage to agencies, and it’s going to erode the ability of those agencies to provide services to American taxpayers.”
Trump’s handling of Social Security is more popular with adults age 60 or older than with younger adults. Despite that, older adults — who tend to be more conservative overall but would also be affected by cuts or changes to Social Security — are no more likely to approve of how Trump is handling his job generally.
Even if there’s no clear backlash now, slashing popular programs like Social Security could still quickly take Trump and Musk into perilous territory. An AP-NORC poll conducted in January found that while Republicans and Democrats were divided on whether the U.S. government is spending “too much” or “too little” on the military, assistance to the poor and education, solid majorities of both said that “too little” was being spent on Social Security.
“All I want from this country is the government to help the seniors and the veterans. Not to take care of them. Help them,” said George Collins, 80, a retired bagel maker living in Fort Mohave, Arizona. “It’s hard when you’re living on Social Security.”
Collins, a Trump supporter, said the president’s second term is going much better than his first, and he wishes Trump’s critics and the courts would get out of his way.
“I wish people would just give him the time,” Collins said. “Let him try to fix it at least.”
Despite Democrats’ attacks on Musk, the opinion of the influential billionaire remains largely indistinguishable from views on Trump. About half of U.S. adults have a “somewhat” or “very” unfavorable opinion of both Musk and Trump, according to the poll, while about 3 in 10 have a “somewhat” or “very” favorable view of both men. Only around 1 in 10 have a positive view of Trump and a negative view of Musk.
Trump picked Musk to oversee a push to shrink the federal government, cull the federal workforce and slash spending on agencies disfavored by the White House, prompting a flurry of legal action.
Rooting out waste is an important goal, said Julio Carmona, a 40-year-old health professional in Stratford, Connecticut. But Carmona believes Musk, the world’s richest person, lacks significant government experience and is not the right person for the job.
“You pick a guy who has the means that he has, that part of it just doesn’t sit well with me,” Carmona said. “There could’ve been so many different qualified people that he chose, but he chose Elon Musk to do that.”
That sliver of Americans with distinct views of Trump and Musk appear to largely be Republicans. About half of Republicans, for example, have a very favorable view of Trump, while about 4 in 10 say that about Musk. They’re far from a majority of people who share their party identity, though — about two-thirds of Republicans have a positive view of both Trump and Musk.
___
Cooper reported from Phoenix.
___
The AP-NORC poll of 1,229 adults was conducted March 20-24, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for adults overall is plus or minus 3.9 percentage points.
