More Americans believe in the supernatural than those who support President Donald Trump’s vanity ballroom project.
Trump and his White House staff had been insistent for months that the project, previously estimated to cost $400 million, would be funded only by private donors, but this week Senate Republicans proposed using $1 billion of taxpayer money to help fund the ballroom’s “security adjustments and upgrades.”
The push by congressional Republicans comes as Trump and MAGA figures have desperately demanded, seemingly in unison, that the ballroom be greenlit in the wake of the attempted shooting targeting Trump administration officials at this year’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
The new ask, however, and the renewed attention the vanity project is getting, are not going over well with voters, CNN’s data analyst Harry Enten revealed.
“It’s the ballroom heard round the world,” he said on CNN on Wednesday. “I recall the ‘shot heard round the world’ Bobby Thompson, ‘51, that was popular, this is most certainly not popular!”
“Privately paid new White House ballroom: look at this, 56 percent opposed to just 28 percent support it,” Enten said, showing data from October 2025.
“Now, after all of the press that the president and Republicans have been trying to make in terms of making this ballroom popular, you know how much it’s moved in terms of popular opinion? It hasn’t moved at all!” Enten exclaimed.
“It’s just as unpopular now as it was in October, it’s 56 percent opposed, just 28 percent support,” he continued.
In an even more worrying sign for the GOP electorally ahead of the 2026 midterm election, which is already expected to go terribly for Republicans, Enten noted that just 18 percent of independent voters supported the ballroom project.
“This ballroom is, simply put, unpopular,” Enten declared.
When asked by CNN News Central co-anchor John Berman to break down just how abysmal those figures were, Enten compared them to those of Americans who believe in the supernatural.
“Americans who support or believe in ghosts: that comes in at 39 percent. How about telepathy? That comes in at 29 percent. And the new White House ballroom comes in below both of those at 28 percent,” he said.
“So the bottom line is this: this new White House ballroom is most certainly not popular,” Enten concluded. “More Americans believe in ghosts, and slightly more—though within the margin of error—believe in telepathy.”
White House spokesperson Davis Ingle did not directly respond to the Daily Beast’s request for comment about the poor approval rating, but asserted that “Trump is making the White House beautiful and giving it the glory it deserves at no cost to the taxpayer.”
Trump’s ballroom has been heavily criticized since he demolished the historic East Wing in October—without any approval—to make way for it.
Its price tag has ballooned. The Trump White House originally said it would cost $200 million, then $400 million, and now it purportedly needs taxpayer funds.
From a design standpoint, the ballroom also appears to have major flaws.
An analysis from The New York Times found that the ballroom’s blueprints include misaligned and fake windows and stairs that lead to nowhere.
The design experts also noted that the ballroom is set to be more than three times the size of the main White House, which will disrupt the historic property’s symmetry.
