Elon Musk’s popularity plummets to 6% among Democrats, poll finds

MicroWave@lemmy.world to News@lemmy.world – 801 points – Elon Musk’s popularity plummets to 6% among Democrats, poll finds
nbcnews.com

The poll shows that public views of Musk are increasingly polarized, with Republican support of the billionaire rising while Democratic support falls.

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.

179

The fuck is wrong with that 6%?

They are stock holders, left holding the bag.

Haha I think I met one!

Dude was a eco-friendly pro-Kamala pro-weed driving a Tesla.

When I made a joke about buying a Tesla before Elon went crazy, he kinda sheepishly shrugged and then excitedly talked about all the new things Tesla is coming out with.

Full Self Driving super soon except you still need to intervene regularly and also robotaxis will never work so it's pointless anyway!

5 years.

Pinky swear.

Oh, and Mars.. 2025. I meant 202025

The worst part is we could definitely have a mars base with today’s technology.

It’s just not economically or scientifically necessary to set up. Robots can do 99% of what a human can on mars, scientifically speaking, and if they break we can just build another one. If someone dies on mars, it’s gonna global news for weeks.

And mars doesn’t exactly have a huge open pit of platinum or something we want to mine, so there’s no economic incentive to set up a colony.

Musk just wants to sell the sci-fi vaporware fantasy to shareholders because SpaceX has one viable product and he’s desperate for no one to notice that.

SpaceX has one viable product

Two. I can't even figure out whether you're ignoring Starlink or their space launch business. But yeah, the Elonville on Mars obsession makes about as much sense as the Cybertruck.

I honestly don’t consider starlink to be a SpaceX product.

I’d technically owned and operated by them because SpaceX owns starlink LLC, but they did it that way to boost their launch contracts for their one viable product: falcon 9 launches.

So since they wanted to split starlink off into its own company, that just so happens to rely 100% on SpaceX for all contracts, then I’ll give it to them. Starlink is its own company. Which means SpaceX still only has one product.

Mars, but only if Trump wins, per the latest news.

Which is good because mars will be about the only inhabitable planet in the solar system if Trump has another term.

Waymo is already operating fully autonomous self driving taxis in SF. Price point is about the same as uber/lyft, a bit cheaper since no tip. And they are all hella nice Jaguars. The difference is Waymo uses lidar and radar to make it work (and also did intensive mapping of city streets). Still needs a lot of work to scale (they do dumb things, but so do human drivers, and are limited to the city so I can't take one to or from my home in Berkeley yet) but they fully exist and are a viable option today.

Man, after years as a valet ages ago I'm so anti Jaguar. Every single time one came through, it had problems. Owners constantly griped about it being in and out the shop a bunch. Nice at a glance, but plenty of the "luxury" brands are apparently made with fucking plastic and band aids.

Waymo sucks. They get stuck a lot, tend to cost as much or more than Uber and Lyft, and you basically hope they don't get stuck trying to navigate around situations because you basically wait until remote assistance fixes it. Also, if you live anywhere near where they park the things, you want Waymo to die in a fire because they honk. ALL. NIGHT. LONG.

Why do they honk?

They get confused and think they are sitting in traffic that isn't moving, so they occasionally let out a honk. Multiply it by dozens of vehicles and it's just a cacophony of honking cars with nobody in them.

I know, I'm in the industry.

Edit: downvotes? Oh, I guess I'm not. Good job, y'all.

Damn, got removed from your job by down votes. Sorry, that sucks.

Being excited about technological progress at Tesla or SpaceX doesn't mean you're a fan or supporter of Musk. These companies are full of thousands of engineers doing this work while the absentee CEO is spending his time shitposting and driving Twitter into the ground.

He's holding them back with his ego.

True. If the engineers and market experts would have had a say in this, they would have made a Micro-Van.

6 Seats, 3.5x1.8 meters, 300km range, flat pack floor folding seats in the back.... AND ALLOWED IN EUROPE FOR NOT BEING A PEDESTRIAN KILLING MACHINE.

So like the IdBuzz?

Yeah but maybe smaller. Real innovation needs courage. A K-Car sized Utilitarian Tesla could have lead the way, but they literally fucked up badly.

Where is the Roadster 2 btw?

Held back to avoid class action lawsuits over the 1000 mile range

I'd love someone to make a small (at least by today's standards) electric pickup similar to a 90s ranger or S10. If there was a cargo van I'd certainly consider it though.

Remember when small trucks were small? I remember. My 2008 Tacoma (which used to be a small truck) seems about the same size as a 90s model Silverado.

I remember the late 90s Tacomas and S10s. I want them back.

But, I do think we hit critical mass because newer ones seem to be shrinking again... I think.

Yeah, I've seen people claim they stopped making them because they didn't sell but when I was in high school half the students had one of one sort or the other and then working at various auto shops afterwards they were at least as common as full size trucks if not more so. People stopped buying them because they stopped making them.

I 100% agree with that and think they need to kick him to the curb. What influence and publicity he could generate for the companies 10 years ago is now long gone and has now transformed into a giant liability.

I'm honestly shocked that the board hasn't gotten rid of him yet. he's just a massive source of problems for them. My suspicion is that he is so good at creating controversy that they can time their watches to it, so to speak, and buy/sell their positions in the company while Elon takes all the heat from the SEC for insider trading, not the crooked board members who know he's a total whacko but acknowledge the reality that he has a lot of gullible techbros with too much money on their hands hanging on his every word and they will rush to buy Tesla stock or Dogecoin or whatever if Elon says he's making market moves when he's actually running his classic pump-and-dump schemes.

There's gotta be some truth to this as I was astounded that they approved that $50+ billion payout that he recently received after threatening to quit. In recent years, Tesla has really floundered and is rapidly losing marketshare with each passing day mostly due to Musk's actions. In what world does that deserve a singular payout valued higher than most corporations earn in an entire year?

It's important to take Tesla and SpaceX at face value and not to extrapolate future success based on what they've accomplished.

Edit: for anyone that follows SpaceX's current shenanigans, seems like they've been using the FAA to scoot permits to launch without proper authorization from other agencies (notably the EPA)

Shit is getting VERY juicy: https://fixupx.com/RepKiley/status/1839066996274516417

They've even got representatives just kind of going along with their demonstrably false narrative for the ride.

Unfortunately that CEO is giving them all a bad name. And the cybertruck is enough of a disaster that it’s destroying the reputation of Tesla by itself.

I don’t know if you can call the cybertruck progress when it’s fucking up basic stuff already worked out in normal cars. Like manual door releases.

They bought a Tesla and now feel like they have to defend their decision

Probably normie centrists that believe in the myth of a free market economy and supports social safety nets but abhors anyone who uses them.

You almost always have a few percent of nonsensical responses in a poll. People who hate sandwiches but love peanut butter and jelly stuck between two pieces of bread. It's so consistent that the lack of it is an indication the poll was rigged or badly done.

They're probably mostly part of the ~8% of Democrats who lean conservative according to Pew's political typology.

That number seems way too low with how far over to the right the party has become in recent years. There's almost zero progressive representation.

I doubt the gradual rightward shift of the Democratic party was a grass roots movement.

“I, a genius, will alienate the group who want EVs to curry favor with the group who will never buy EVs. Genius, I say.”

He has to satisfy the guys they fronted him the billions he needed to buy and destroy Twitter.

The fact that MBS gave Elon $22B in order to buy Twitter gets swept under the rug in literally every discussion. If the narrative was true, that Elon was forced to buy Twitter because he didn't know when to stop running his mouth, why would MBS be cool with throwing $22B at a thing without any hope of seeing an ROI?

The ROI is the destruction of a social media platform that enabled global protest and solidarity movements toward equality and equity of the lower and middle classes against our global elite; anti hijab movements, women’s equal rights in Muslim countries, black lives matters in western countries, the revolution in France over the retirement age, to name a few.

Edit: and let’s not forget the impact this has had on growing conservative movements, increased foreign interference in US politics, and the weakening of western democracy.

He's just seeing what Trump and the GOP are planning for the US and hopes he'll be one of the oligarchs at the top in the end.

It's a strong play if the idea was to take money from oil companies, come into a car company after it was already established, apply his brash personality as the defacto brand of the business, and then crater the sales of that company while the Fed applies 100% tariffs to Chinese EVs, essentially destroying the EV market for anyone who makes under 100k a year.

Thats fine, I'm sure Republicans will start buying EVs any day now

The next tesla model will have a coal oven inside it. Will still run on electricity, the oven is just in there so you can do some pollution too. The main factor in making the electric part palpable to republicans will be telling them how brown people are being exploited to get the materials for the batteries out of the ground.

Nah, it will be worse. Tesla will start selling a hybrid model with a generator onboard that can charge the battery as you go. That generator will be designed to be fueled by ground-up burning tires, unrecycleable plastic, and human hair. .

Sadly I know someone who just bought a tesla model 3.

I'm fine with this, fuck it, if it takes a pos like Elon to make republicans to buy EV , I'm fine it, the silver lining is that at least both sides will buy electric.

Who. Fucking. Cares.

(Not directed at OP, just the idea of the survey in general. Who needed to know this information? Why do they think the public needs to know how popular a random rich guy it's.)

he's not a random rich guy and claiming that is either disingenuous or irresponsible. though i get the frustration, just because he's a demonic troglodyte you wish you never heard about anymore doesn't mean you get to ignore his existence. then they get to do whatever they want.

pushback, scrutiny and ridicule are the only tools we have against massively influential cunts. and because they're massively influential, their popularity matters.

There's also the fact that if people hate him enough and realise how genuinely stupid the guy is, they'll start wondering if the economic system that allowed him to amass the wealth of a country as millions starve might be doing it wrong.

even before that, if enough people hate him, his personal brand would become toxic and his influence would hopefully shrink.

Someone may want to know if you are a Democrat or Republican (for advertising, for gerrymandering, whatever). That person may not be able to ask you a direct question like that though (or may feel that you may lie about the answer to such a question anyway).

As such, they likely carry out occasional surveys asking people who are Democrat or Republicans for their opinions on something else. Once they find something else that can strongly correlate your political affiliation with a specific opinion, they know of a new question they can ask someone. That new question should generally reveal what your political party is most likely and they can then proceed with that "most likely" answer.

So "who cares" is those who cannot directly ask you something. They will ask you something else and use that answer to deduce the information they cannot obtain directly.

As I understand this "question by proxy" can be even more effective because people are less likely to lie about Musk than about their political views

Considering how politically active he is, he might become a politician (even running for president?). A lot of people will care about this if suddenly Elon musk appears in American ballots.

EDIT: I just remembered that Elon cannot run for USA president. But idk if other political positions are open.

And seeing how trump can break every law, I don't see what would prevent Elon from running for president.

would prevent Elon from running for president.

Not native-born though

With our current SCOTUS all he has to do is sue then ride it up to SCOTUS and have em declare it unconstitutional to have requirements for office.

That's kind of a paradox - we can't stop reporting actions of assholes like him because they do things borderline dangerous to society, but that exact reporting gives them the popularity to do all that

Money is power. Rich people are more powerful than politics. We should care much more about them than we do now. Musk is dangerous. He's also visible and that's a good thing. The quiet invisible ones are even more dangerous.

Pretty much every media outlet across the world.

The opposing party in the UK is electing leaders, and they've all been asked what they think of him. Like it or not, but in turning one of the biggest multi-billion dollar social media platforms into a small million dollar right-wing platform for crypto bots, he's now got a lot of influence on politics across the world.

What makes it funnier is that he probably doesn't give a fuck about the Tories in the UK, but if Trump loses he'll own a right-wing platform with zero influence on what he cares about.

A survey conducted means someone paid for it. I'm having a hard time believing anyone but Elon himself being willing to pay for this survey.

Maybe someone on the board at Tesla demanded it when they gave him the money to prove he wasn't worth investing in. 🤷

It's not for us, it is for him.

He really cares how popular he is, that is why he is buying all these popular businesses to pretend he founded them.

Fuck Elon

Fuck Tesla

Fuck Xitter

Fuck Spa Sex

Fuck Starlink

Did I miss anyone? Oh yes, and Fuck Elon.

Neuralink.

Fuck that shit, too.

(Especially when you learn about thiel and the other tech Bros plans to harvest humans for biofuel by keeping them alive and hooked up in a virtual world. As a more "humane alternative to genocide")

https://newrepublic.com/article/183971/jd-vance-weird-terrifying-techno-authoritarian-ideas

Why do these people keep looking at the Matrix as a manual instead of a warning?

One of my super tinfoil theories is that all mainstream science/speculative fiction is a psyop not meant to warn, but to desensitise us to the dystopia.

Obviously, that would just seem crazy...

On an unrelated note:

https://www.thevintagenews.com/2015/12/21/41772/

I was about to post a snarky reply about Star Trek as the exception, and then realized their bioconservatives won the "Eugenics Wars".

Qanon is all about the galactic federation, if you didn't already know.

See upper right:

It's a little confusing because the image is cropped.

Sorry, yeah, it would make more sense if you could see the yeti, samsquanch, Elvis overlord section.

Behind the Bastards recently did a two-parter on Yarvin with Ed Helms as a guest. It’s depressing but good, as per usual.

The Boring Company, fuck them, too.

Something to avoid- standing near a parked Tesla with sentry mode enabled drains its battery significantly as it tracks you. Locating a camera and displaying a paper sign, one light enough to blow in the wind that reads “musk sucks”, would accomplish the same thing, and should also be avoided.

While funny... I think you underestimate how big the battery in a Tesla is and also how little power the computer would pull.

THAT said... I wonder if there is a drive somewhere that could be filled doing that?

From what I understand, it wastes an extra ~2%/hr. A tragic sum, if done repeatedly throughout the week. I think it overwrights old data as the drive fills. I can’t see utility in that, aside from mischievously scrubbing old footage.

It's nowhere near 2% an hour. It's like ~300w/h to keep it all running, and they said they were going to reduce that further by 40% in the near future, so ~180w/h

300w/h on a 62kw/h (model 3 standard range) battery is 0.48% an hour. You'd lose 3.82% for an 8h workday, and soon to be 2.29%

And the % would decrease as the battery is larger like a long range vehicle.

I'm not saying this is ideal, but 2%/h is just flat out wrong, and almost a whole order of magnitude after the update.

w/h ?

Watts per hour

Although it should be it uses 300w/h on a 62kwh battery.

I did the battery unit wrong.

Yeah and what does that unit mean, acceleration of power draw?

The battery has the power for 62,000 watts hours. Sentry mode (pretty much leaving the computer on) draws 300 watts per hour.

So you could leave sentry on for 62,000 / 300 hours or 206 hours before it kills the battery before the update. (Edit on a standard range model 3)

Edit: so ya it's power draw, no acceleration, just power draw.

You cannot "draw 300 watts per hour"

Watts is a unit of energy per time unit...

Why in God's good name would I care about Elon Muskrat's popularity among Democrats?

YOU might not. But I'm sure the politicians and bureaucrats who determine whether Musk's businesses continue getting billions in taxpayer funded subsidies would sure like to know if the public is behind continuing to do that. I for one would consider it a bonus if say, the Democrats won control in November, looked at the numbers and decided none of their supporters are behind Musk, determined he's been playing fast and loose using taxpayer dollars to fund pushing his own political agenda, and turned off the free ride.

Since when do his enablers in government give one single flying fuck what the People think?

They don't. But if they already have it in for someone, which the Democrats in Congress almost certainly do right now, public opinion can give them a cover to act.

It's certainly not for our benefit, but if one group of shitlords wants to take another shitlord down a few pegs, I'm certainly going to enjoy the show.

Right? Just said the same thing. Man. Journalism is getting cringey and embarrassing lately.

Who the hell are those 6%?

The people that made money investing in Tesla. I have a friend that made a ton of of Elon. But I'm a good boy, and bite my tongue about it.

62% positive isn't really the flipside of 79% negative.
If you combine the 6 and 62% positive and estimate they are about equal size demographics, it's only about 34% positive combined, with 47% negative.
I bet that when Tesla collapses, the 62% positive republicans will decline too. Republicans are only positive towards him because they think he is some sort of money guru.

Tesla is losing marketshare hard in Europe, and probably in China too, if it isn't happening already in USA it is probably imminent, as Tesla developments of new cars can't keep up with the pace of the competition, and Tesla models are looking more and more outdated. Tesla is already looking like a failing company, despite they have by far the biggest marketshare in pure EV.

Tesla also lost a ton of the initial talent that made the model S and X such incredible feats of technology. IMO, if I buy and electric car here in the states it’s a Lucid, and if I get an SUV it’s a Rivian.

The new Lucid air looks awesome, FFS 1234 hp and 1.9 sec 0-60 mph !! The more moderate Touring trim is $85k which comes to almost $110k here with taxes.
That's a bit above my pay grade, but the BMW i4 is very popular here (Denmark) and is almost half that. A way better option than any Tesla IMO.

This isn't reflected in the stock price. It's one of the stocks I keep an eye on and I constantly see articles about the company in trouble and losing market share and yet the stock continues to keep ticking up. I'll believe it's failing when the market starts to turn on it.

A lot of people believe Tesla isn't a car company anymore, but an AI and energy company. And the stock value seems to be based on that.
But those branches bring in very little revenue, and I doubt Tesla will ever succeed in those branches.
Musk has promised for 8 years that fully autonomous driving would be available next year. But they are not even a leader like they claim.
Musk is either nuts or a con man.

Is that the 6% that are buying Tesla's? Seriously though it's not like the right are buying his electric cars

Might be the folks that are all about SpaceX?

Well, that's kind of fair I don't hate SpaceX either. They seem to keep him at arms length.

I've heard that they have people on payroll specifically to keep Elon as far away as possible from operations.

We cannot explain why it's this high

Poll of whom, you ask?

Interviews: 1,000 Registered Voters, including 870 respondents interviewed via cellphone. Date: September 13-17, 2024

They obviously don't poll those of us who don't answer calls from numbers we don't recognize.

And don't return sketchy voicemails. We Olde learned this in the days of "Caller ID" as an extra paid service.

Christ, he's ACTUALLY managed to hit the Lizardman Constant with the dems.

Now hit it with the Repubs too. Come on Trump. You wanna turn on your ally. You wanna turn on your ally and throw him to your cult soooooo badly. It'll be really funny I promise

Trump is easy to manipulate. Go on Truth Social, astroturf the shit out of the idea that Musk is going to backstab Trump. Sit back and enjoy the show.

Many many people are saying it. Trump would have won if Musky Leon actually was a man of his word and ran those Trump ads on X. He promised $45 million of ads during the RNC, but Leon ended up just charging $45 million for the first ad.

I can only see 'being a billionaire' as 'stealing from the population at large'. So you're saying the biggest thief of society is still popular among 6% of democrats.

I mean… yeah.

I do wonder what the reason for those 6% are,

Not surprised there are some, but do they support some of what he is doing or are they tolerant?

I think some people really aren’t aware of his political side and just see him as the green car guy.

You'd have to be living under a rock to not be aware of Musk's political side at this point ... and rocks are too expensive for anybody to afford any more.

if he starts painting his face and saying 'you're fired'. look out 6%

Who are the 6% that identify as Democrats?

Why are we doing popularity polls on billionares? Unless he’s running for office the default for all normal Americans should just be eat the rich.

Well Taylor Swift is now a billionaire and she popular af.

Emo:

  • treats his employees like shit (some are even suing)
  • he sends money to the fascist felon
  • actively supports the fascist felon on Shitter and IRL
  • trying to extort 56 billion from Tesla (to keep him motivated)

And yet we are supporting his monopoly on smart electric vehicles with tariffs.

its what happens when he sucks a spoiled orange in public

Why are we tracking this assholes popularity like he is someone relevant to anything that requires popularity?

He’s a tech douche. Who fucking cares what percentage of popularity he holds!? He’s not running for office. He’s not even qualified to.

Ugly, gross, cringe, white cucks aren’t my thing either. May be the one thing I share with the libs.

Leftists ≠ Libs. The Libs were split 31% to 36% in this poll.

Admittedly the Democrats aren't leftists.

he was always a terrible person even when he was "that nerd who goes on big bang theory" but let's face it. his popularity is lower with more people than just democrats.

Why is musk’s(and Swift’s) popularity newsworthy? Unless they are trying to run for office, who cares?

Musk has continued to interfere with politics over and over again. From donations, to censorship, to being a weird fucking creep to female politicians.

Swift was dragged in there because Donald Trump shared fake AI images of her supporting Donald. To fix the blowback, Swift said, "Ew you old filthy pedo, I'm not doing that". (Don't quote me)

Its newsworthy because it's news.

So Musk is a creepy dickhead. That’s not news. It’s been apparent for quite a while now

Because they have lots of money and influence among the 18-35 demographic. Would I prefer if news corps didn't cover their every move and thought? Yeah I would, but unfortunately news featuring Musk and Swift gets clicks which drives advertising.

Musk bought one of the biggest social media platforms expressly to manipulate news, which in turn manipulates politics and markets.

He's basically like a narcissistic Rupert Murdock who wants to make his manipulation all centered around how cool he is.

That's news.

Taylor Swift is just filler content. It's taking the place of worlds largest cookie stories. But the reason it gains traction is that she has taken on a bit of a counter persona to the Right's habitual sexism. She's an influential woman. The Right can't stand that shit.

It was news when he bought the platform. It was news when advertisers boycotted his platform. It was news when it first became a far right cesspool. It’s news when X finally capitulated to the Brazilian government.

His approval rating doesn’t matter and isn’t news. His continual support of far right figures isn’t news unless he is supporting someone new.

Do we report about Steve Ballmer or Tim Cook’s approval ratings? No. Because it doesn’t matter. It’s not news. Stop giving Musk attention he doesn’t deserve. We shouldn’t be talking about him. He craves the spotlight. Don’t give it to hin

Orrrrr and hear me out. He's just such an amazing genius that he's pissing off democrats as that's the only thing that appeals to republicans. All of this to trick repubs away from their "my truck only does gas you soy boys" minds and into buying evs since the democrats have already been saturated. Wild conspiracy here!

Do you really think all Democrats already have EVs? Because while they're surely the most likely to buy them, they're now also decidedly less likely to buy Tesla. So your "amazing genius" actually just alienated his biggest market demographic.

Elon Musk is a fucking idiot who has done more than anyone else in history to disprove the idea of Billionaire Exceptionalism.