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What Voters are Telling Us about Elon Musk's DOGE project in Swing States and Districts [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-04-22
As you might imagine, there’s quite a bit of interest in what we are hearing from voters about their approval of the DOGE fiasco at their doors. We added add one thing to our questionnaire this year at the request of Hope Springs from Field PAC [dated website] volunteers: we are asking voters whether they approve of DOGE and the administration’s cuts to federal programs and agencies. Given that we are talking to more unaffiliated voters this year, we are offering that as a way to screen MAGA-leaning voters that we talk to.
Not surprisingly, since we don’t knock on the doors of Republican households, DOGE isn’t too popular with voters. Realize that our response rate to this question is less than 60%, depending on the state — a lot of voters don’t recognize the term or know what the Elon Musk-led group does. So we framed it specifically about “cuts to federal programs such as Social Security, Medicare & Medicaid.”
Our primary focus remains states with competitive Senate races next year, especially inside the Congressional districts considered vulnerable (especially those held by Republican incumbents in the House). We continue to use our Issues Questionnaire to drive voter responses and identify their priorities in our Early Organization model. Voter engagement leads to GOTV next year, and allows us to find what can help drive them to the polls in 2026.
But we get asked all the time what we are hearing about DOGE and this administration’s efforts to cut the federal budget. Even though we aren’t talking to Republicans, even if i had more free time, i couldn’t satisfy all the interest in what our volunteers hear at the doors each week in this regard.
Probably the biggest observation that we are hearing in our weekly canvasses is that, while we do find voters who like the idea of pairing back the federal budget, very few of those voters seem to like the way this administration is going about it. “It doesn’t sound like they are targeting waste, fraud and abuse,” one voter told a volunteer (who recorded what she could on our Observation sheet). “Services seem like they are just on the chopping block.” We’ve even had voters compare what they hear about DOGE to what they know about how Elon Musk cut jobs at Twitter. His “tell me 5 things you did this week” emails seems to have cemented that connection to quite a few voters.
“Why are we asking federal employees to report to Musk instead of helping out Americans who need their help?”
That’s a good question. And even better one from a voter in Virginia CD-01 (a red district that Democrats are hoping will be more competitive this year): If Musk is saving so much money, why am I reading about them wanting to increase the debt ceiling next month? Boy, do i wish i had gotten the opportunity to talk to this voter!
As you can see, except for a few weeks in Florida (FL-06 to be exact), Georgia and Texas, support or approval of the DOGE process was never above 10% in the Swing States we’ve been canvassing in this Spring and it’s disapproval was mostly above 40%.
Hope Springs from Field PAC began knocking on doors again on March 1st. We target Democrats and unaffiliated voters with a systematic approach that reminds them not only that Democrats care, but Democrats are determined to deliver the best government possible to all Americans. The voters we talk to continue to tell us they come away more invested in governance and feel more favorably towards Democrats in general because of our approach.
Obviously, we rely on grassroots support, so if you support field/grassroots organizing, voter registration (and follow-up) and our efforts to protect our voters, we would certainly appreciate your support:
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[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/4/22/2317985/-What-Voters-are-Telling-Us-about-Elon-Musk-s-DOGE-project-in-Swing-States-and-Districts?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=latest_community&pm_medium=web
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