Elon Musk’s image isn’t what it used to be.
The Tesla CEO’s feud with President Donald Trump risked worsening his already underwater popularity, and new polling shows that even the apparent peace between the once-friends hasn’t repaired Musk’s standing with Republicans.
A new Morning Consult poll found that Musk’s net favorability is at -14 percentage points. The good news for the billionaire is that his overall standing as of June 20 is up four points since June 15, the week after the peak of his feud with Trump.
It’s still lower than where he stood when he left the White House in late May. Among Republicans, Musk is down roughly 12 points; he’d dropped 10 points immediately after he criticized Trump in early June.
“In the US, Musk managed to alienate both those on the left (due to his support for DOGE, the Trump administration, and the election) and those on the right (as seen in his statements on X following his fallout with the President over the “big beautiful bill”),” Frank T. Rothaermel, a regents’ professor at the Scheller College of Business at Georgia Tech, told Business Insider in an email.
“The good thing in the US is that people’s memories are short and a ton of stuff is happening every day,” he added.
Voters began to become increasingly polarized toward Musk after his takeover of Twitter, Morning Consult US Politics Analyst Eli Yokley told Business Insider. Musk’s closeness to Trump “poured fuel on the fire,” which left his image in a much different state than some of his fellow tech moguls, who also sought to curry favor with the White House.
“It weighs on him in a very unique way that other CEOs who have tried to kiss the ring a bit just haven’t experienced to the same extent,” Yokley told Business Insider.
Musk’s favorability isn’t polled as frequently as someone like Trump. YouGov, which has sporadic data on Musk going back to 2018, found that immediately after the feud, Musk recorded his lowest net favorability in its records.
The handful of post-feud polls that have been released show similar warning signs. Namely, many Republicans, who were once the bulwark for Musk’s sagging numbers, no longer have such rosy views of the billionaire.
An Economist-YouGov poll taken in the week after the feud found that Musk’s net favorability among Republicans dropped 20 points. A Reuters-Ipsos poll found that he dropped 13 points in net favorability in a roughly one-month span.
This is a critical moment for Tesla
On June 22, Tesla began a limited rollout of its robotaxi service in Austin. The stock jumped as much as 11% the following day, though it had pared its gains by the end of the week. Overall, it’s been a wild year for Tesla’s share price.
Musk is the face of Tesla, a close association that comes with some risk. Some analysts downgraded the company during his feud with Trump.
“The recent incident between Musk and President Trump exemplifies key-person risk associated with Musk’s political activities,” Baird senior research analyst Ben Kallo wrote in a note earlier this month.
Musk has signaled a retreat from politics, though whether he sticks by that commitment remains to be seen.
Tesla is facing other challenges. In China, the newly announced Xiaomi YU7 is priced to compete with Tesla’s popular Model Y, and Tesla’s sales have fallen in key markets like Europe in recent months.
The automaker is set to announce its second-quarter delivery numbers on Wednesday, and many analysts are expecting a year-over-year decrease.
John Helveston, an assistant professor at George Washington University, told BI that Musk’s “political unpopularity is very unhelpful” as the CEO looks to navigate Tesla through the challenges it’s currently facing.
“Elon Musk is strongest [indeed, world-class, second to none] when he focuses on his core competencies: solving ‘impossible’ engineering problems,” Rothaermel said. “If I were on the board of directors at Tesla, that is what I would want him to focus on.”
The Morning Consult poll is based on data collected during the firm’s tracking poll from June 20 to 22nd, based on a representative sample of 2,205 registered U.S. voters. The margin of error is +/- 2 percentage points. Smaller subsamples have a larger margin of error. Full results are available here.
