BRIGHT IDEA

Pollster Reveals MAGA Is Splitting From Trump on Key Issue

A majority of Trump-aligned voters support solar power.

Despite the Trump administration’s push against renewables, a new poll shows that a majority of Trump-aligned voters support solar power—especially if the panels are made in the U.S.

The survey, conducted by Fabrizio, Lee & Associates, and shared exclusively with Axios, sampled a “GOP+” group of Republicans, Trump voters, and GOP-leaning independents.

It found that 51 percent of respondents support utility-scale solar—large power plants that feed electricity into the grid—while 30 percent oppose it.

Support jumps to 70 percent if the panels are domestically produced and free of Chinese components. Nearly seven in ten, 68 percent, also agree that all forms of electricity generation, including solar, are needed to keep costs low.

The poll was conducted among 800 registered voters between Jan. 19-21. It had a margin of error of +/- 3.46 percent.

“GOP+ voters want America to have energy independence and affordable electric bills,” the polling memo notes. It concludes that the perception of right-leaning voters opposing solar is largely inaccurate.

The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.

Trump has frequently expressed skepticism about renewable energy, including solar and wind power.

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In public remarks from July 2025, Trump dismissed solar and wind power, calling both a negative influence on the U.S. energy landscape. “We don’t want wind, and we don’t want solar because they’re a blight on our country. They hurt our country very badly, and smart countries don’t use it,” he said.

He has also labelled wind and solar power “the scam of the century,” even as the United States remains the world’s largest producer of fossil fuels.

In 2025, his administration halted all new offshore wind leases, citing national security risks, effectively stalling a major segment of the country’s renewable energy expansion.

Approvals for major solar projects were also slowed or frozen. A Reuters review found that the administration’s freeze on approvals for major onshore wind and solar projects has left thousands of megawatts of clean energy capacity in limbo, slowing the progress of renewable infrastructure.

Trump also railed against wind energy at the most recent World Economic Forum in Davos. Trump has long railed against windmills both on the campaign trail and since he returned to office.

“Instead of closing down energy plants, we are opening them up; instead of building ineffective money-losing windmills, we’re taking them down and not approving any,” Trump told the audience.

He also repeated the false claim that China doesn’t use its own turbines: “They sell them to the stupid people that buy them. They don’t use them themselves.” Trump added that China only built “a couple of wind farms” as showpieces that “don’t spin, they don’t do anything,” while profiting from exports.

In reality, China has the world’s largest onshore and offshore wind fleet and manufactures turbines for domestic use as well as selective exports.

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