How popular is Elon Musk?

Silver Bulletin favorability ratings for the world's richest man.

🕒 The latest

As we start the week, 38.3 percent of Americans have a favorable view of Elon Musk and 53.9 percent have an unfavorable view of him. This time last week, those numbers were 39.3 and 53.0, respectively. So his favorability rating is still decreasing, albeit more slowly than it did back in March. Here are some of the most recent polls driving Musk’s net favorability rating of -15.6:

• The New York Times/Siena College: -21 percent net favorability

• YouGov/Times of London: -15

• AP-NORC: -24

• Reuters/Ipsos: -20

• Data for Progress: -12

• Morning Consult: -13

Will Musk’s favorability decline stop — or even reverse — once he steps back from his role in DOGE? Watch this space to find out. -EMD, 4/28/25

See also: Trump approval ratings dashboard.

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Elon Musk was once fairly popular. But his numbers have inverted as his support for President Trump has increased and particularly since he became a “special government employee” and the de facto head of DOGE. Although Musk may eventually leave the government, he’ll remain an exceptionally important and controversial public figure even if he does. Until then, he could be a liability for Trump because he’s less popular than the president is even as Trump’s numbers have also declined. For our theories about what Musk is hoping to get out of all of this, see here.

Thus, this the landing page for the Silver Bulletin average of Musk’s favorability polls, tracking him back to the start of 2024.¹ We’ll regularly update this average as new polls come in.² If you’re viewing this in your email client or the Substack app, you should visit the web version to ensure you’re seeing the latest data.

Our polling averages are the direct descendant of the polling averages that Nate designed for FiveThirtyEight, and the methodology is largely the same. Click here for more information on how the average works. Silver Bulletin pollster ratings weight more reliable polls more heavily. They adjust for house effects. And they account for uncertainty, estimating the fairly wide range where new polls might come in. Our process for calculating Musk’s favorability ratings is similar to that for calculating President Trump’s approval ratings, although we use slightly more conservative settings as Musk is polled less often than Trump.³

The topline: So, just how popular is Elon Musk?

Our default version of the ratings reflects a combination of all polls, whether conducted among adults, registered voters or likely voters. If a pollster releases multiple versions of the same survey, we use the all-adult version of the poll before the registered voter version.⁴

The polls: What do the surveys say?

You can see all the numbers for each poll that feeds into our average below. You can also click here to download all the numbers — and some additional details not shown in the chart below — for every Musk favorability poll in our database.

This is a free feature, but it requires work to update and maintain. We very much appreciate your support via paid or free subscriptions.

1. If you notice any bugs in the charts or missing polls, just shoot Eli a message and he’ll get them fixed as quickly as possible.

2. We’ll suspend the updates only if Musk so distances himself from politics that pollsters stop regularly asking about him.

3. More specifically, the settings we use for the Musk tracker are similar to the ones we’ve historically used for our generic ballot averages. In addition to not being polled as often, Musk doesn’t make news as often as the president — thus, abrupt changes in approval ratings are more likely to be noise rather than signal — and there tend to be larger house effects when different firms poll about him. Therefore, the settings use for presidential approval would produce an average that is too “bouncy” if applied to Musk.

4. And we use the registered voter version before the likely voter version.