EXCLUSIVE — Most workers do not have qualms with Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency aides asking federal employees what they accomplished during the previous week.
A poll published by J.L. Partners on Wednesday found that 55% of workers would describe the “five things” email that Musk and DOGE sent federal employees earlier this month as “reasonable,” while 39% would call it “unreasonable.”
More generally, a plurality of the poll’s respondents considered the email to be unreasonable, 44% reasonable to 45% unreasonable.
However, the poll, which was conducted before federal employees received a second email last weekend with a Monday deadline asking them to provide their superiors with a list of five tasks they completed during the past week, found that a plurality of male respondents thought the original email was reasonable.
Moreover, a plurality of people who are younger than 50 years of age, college graduates, respondents who identify as white and black, those who are employed, regardless of whether they are white- or blue-collar workers, and those who have an annual income of more than $75,000 also found the first email to be reasonable.
Although there was a partisan divide between Democratic and Republican respondents, only 41% of independents perceived the email as reasonable, compared to 45% who did not. Seventy percent of Republicans agreed with the email, with only 24% of Democrats expressing the same opinion.
The other striking divide was among Latino or Hispanic respondents. Only 35% supported the email, in contrast to 55% who did not.
For J.L. Partners co-founder James Johnson, whose polling firm had the most accurate forecast model of the 2024 election, the poll’s most interesting finding was regarding workers.
Respondents were similarly asked whether they would find the email reasonable had they received one from their own employer. Overall, 41% told pollsters it would be reasonable, while 33% said it was not. Among workers, 50% said it was reasonable, with 37% saying it was not.
“Musk’s email may have caused chaos in the federal government, and even the Cabinet, but the average American worker thinks it is a reasonable ask,” Johnson told the Washington Examiner. “Those workers in the real world think it is reasonable, that they would also find their own boss sending the email a fair ask, and that they could answer it themselves.”
Of the federal government’s approximately 2.4 million employees, excluding military personnel, more than 1 million responded to DOGE’s first email last week, according to the White House. The second email, sent by the Office of Personnel Management, advised its workforce it would have to reply to similar emails in perpetuity.
Although the Pentagon and Justice Department directed their employees to disregard the first email, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Attorney General Pam Bondi required their workforces to respond to the second. The State Department and FBI made alternate arrangements for their staff.
Irrespective of the uncertainty they created, Trump and Musk have defended the emails, arguing, at least in the words of the billionaire Tesla, SpaceX, and X entrepreneur, that they are not “a performance review,” but “a pulse check review.”
“What we are trying to get to the bottom of is, we think there are a number of people on the payroll who are dead, which is probably why they can’t respond — and some people who are not real people,” Musk said during last week’s Cabinet meeting at the White House. “If you have a pulse and two neurons, you can reply to an email.”
Trump agreed: “Those million people that haven’t responded though, Elon, they are on the bubble… Those people are on the bubble as they say, maybe they’re gonna be gone.”
J.L. Partners polled a nationally representative sample of 1,001 registered voters online from Feb. 24-25 for a margin of error of plus or minus 3.4 percentage points.
