Voters Aren't Clamoring for DOGE Cuts

As President Donald Trump and White House adviser Elon Musk scour the federal government for savings via the newly created Department of Government Efficiency, they face a problem with public opinion.

As voters sour on the billionaire's involvement in Trump’s government, Morning Consult’s latest survey finds there is little appetite among the electorate — including among Republicans — to slash or eliminate a range of government agencies that DOGE has targeted.

According to the data, comfortable majorities of voters would preserve or expand funding for the Department of Defense, the Department of Education, the National Institutes of Health, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Half would do the same for funding of the United States Agency for International Development.

Support is lower among Republicans, but more of them than not back at least maintaining current funding for every government entity tested except for USAID, which the DOGE project has already sought to fold into the State Department.

More voters across the board are open to funding cuts than ending money entirely. This is especially true when it comes to the Education Department, which Trump has said should be abolished, the NIH, whose researchers are facing layoffs, and the Pentagon, which is also set to come under Musk’s microscope.

As he looks to shrink the government, Musk — an unelected special government employee whose appointment has become less popular as he’s worked to purge the federal workforce — has targeted an “unelected” bureaucracy of civil servants that conservatives have maligned as overwhelmingly liberal and against Trump’s agenda. But perceptions of a left-leaning civil service is not the consensus view among voters. 

While 1 in 4 voters believe career federal employees are mostly liberal, even more (34%) think they are a “mix of liberals and conservatives,” along with 18% who see them as “mostly conservative.” Democratic and independent voters overwhelmingly see an ideological mix within the federal workforce, but Republican voters are more divided, with 3 in 10 saying these employees are mostly liberal and a quarter each seeing it as mostly conservative or mixed.

When looking at government workers nationwide more broadly, including more than just those in the federal workforce, Morning Consult’s daily tracking conducted this year suggests a political split almost right down the middle.

Half of government employees who voted in 2024 backed Democrat Kamala Harris, compared with 46% who supported Trump. Cut by ideology, public employees this year are slightly more likely to cast themselves as conservative than liberal (32% to 29%), though a similar share (28%) says they hold moderate views.

The bottom line

Only 31% of voters say that reducing the size and scope of the federal government should be a top priority for the administration, though almost half (46%) say it is one for Trump’s government, per our latest tracking survey. 

That suggests a mismatch in priorities that could result in mounting voter backlash, especially if unpopular cuts at these agencies have real-life consequences not just for fired federal employees, but also the voters who rely on government services, many of whom voted for Republicans in 2024.