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A study by the Pew Research Center found that Americans’ views of Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg skew more negative than positive.
While Zuckerberg has sparked chatter in Silicon Valley with his sudden interest in high fashion, the Meta CEO is less popular than President Trump’s right-hand man, Elon Musk, the report found. While about 54% of U.S. adults say they have an unfavorable view of Musk, 67% feel negatively toward Zuckerberg.
The two tech executives have come under increased scrutiny since the start of President Trump’s second term; both sat alongside the president at his inauguration and made donations to his inauguration fund. While Zuckerberg has upended longstanding Meta content moderation policies to limit fact-checking and action against hate speech, Musk has played a key role in Trump’s camp thus far.
Throughout the first month of Trump’s presidency, Musk has directly involved himself in the U.S. government operations, using his political connections to gut government departments like USAID, which provides humanitarian aid around the world. All the while, Musk’s DOGE has overstated the impact of its budget cuts by billions of dollars.
Given Musk’s affiliation with Trump, it follows that along party lines, 85% of respondents who are Democrats or lean Democratic-held unfavorable views of the Tesla CEO. Meanwhile, 73% of Republican or Republican-aligned respondents felt favorably toward Musk.
But Zuckerberg, the Facebook founder, is more universally disliked, though he draws more ire from the left-leaning demographic. While 60% of Republican and Republican-leaning respondents hold an unfavorable view of Zuckerberg, 76% of their Democratic counterparts share that sentiment.
So, while Zuck may be playing the part of the cool guy, Americans haven’t been fooled by his gold chains or musical ambitions, it seems.
Pew’s study involved a panel of 5,086 randomly selected U.S. adults The survey was conducted from Jan. 27 through Feb. 2, 2025, so these responses reflect people’s recent opinions.
Amanda Silberling is a senior writer at TechCrunch covering the intersection of technology and culture. She has also written for publications like Polygon, MTV, the Kenyon Review, NPR, and Business Insider. She is the co-host of Wow If True, a podcast about internet culture, with science fiction author Isabel J. Kim. Prior to joining TechCrunch, she worked as a grassroots organizer, museum educator, and film festival coordinator. She holds a B.A. in English from the University of Pennsylvania and served as a Princeton in Asia Fellow in Laos.

 
Send tips through Signal, an encrypted messaging app, to (929) 593-0227. For anything else, email amanda@techcrunch.com.
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