Voters are worried about AI and don’t trust either political party to handle the rapidly evolving technology, according to a new national NBC News survey.
A majority of registered voters, 57%, said they believe the risks of AI outweigh its benefits, compared with 34% who said the opposite. What’s more, a plurality of voters view AI negatively and don’t believe either Democrats or Republicans are doing a good job handling policy related to the rapidly advancing technology.
Just 26% of voters say they have positive feelings about AI, compared with 46% who hold negative views. In fact, the only topics that were less popular than AI in the NBC News survey were the Democratic Party and Iran.
AI industry leaders have said their technology will result in companies’ eliminating jobs over the next few years. AI’s effect on the political landscape is still forming, with politicians so far seeking to address issues related to electricity bill hikes tied to the rapid expansion of AI data centers, child safety and the use of AI in the military.
At the same time, economists, tech leaders and elected officials of both major parties have talked up the promise of the technology, pointing to potential advancements that AI could help unlock while underscoring the need to secure that progress ahead of China. The Trump administration has made clearing the field for AI advancement a key priority, with President Donald Trump pushing back in an interview with NBC News last month against concerns that AI would eliminate jobs.
“They said the internet was gonna do — everything was gonna do — robots are gonna kill jobs. Everything’s gonna kill jobs,” he said. “And you end up, if you’re smart, doing great.”
Asked which party is better at handling AI, 20% of voters in the NBC News poll said Republicans, while 19% said Democrats. Meanwhile, 33% of voters said neither party was good at dealing with AI, while 24% said the parties were about the same.
The shares of voters who said either Republicans or Democrats were better at handling AI were lower than the share of voters who said either party was better at handling any other issue polled by NBC News.
Bill McInturff, a Republican pollster with Public Opinion Strategies, which conducted the NBC News poll along with the Democratic polling firm Hart Research Associates, said the findings indicate AI is an issue that’s “up for grabs” by both parties to try to seize a political advantage.
The demographic groups with the most negative views of AI are voters ages 18-34, among whom the net favorability rating for AI is minus 44, and women ages 18-49, who reported a net AI favorability rating of minus 41. The two groups with the most positive views of AI are men over 50, with a plus 2 favorability rating, and upper-class voters, who also have a plus 2 favorability rating.
There is also a partisan divide in the data, with an even split of Republicans holding positive or negative views of AI (33% for each), while independent voters and Democrats held more negative opinions. For independents, 26% held positive views, compared with 48% who viewed AI negatively. For Democrats, the division is 20% to 56%.
The numbers from the poll, which was conducted Feb. 27-March 3, come as the job market has contracted in five of the last nine months, with a record 25% of unemployed workers having four-year college degrees in November. Entry-level jobs look to be among those AI could have the largest effect on, as a team of Stanford researchers found in a report that workers ages 22 to 25 in industries with the most exposure to generative AI experienced a 16% relative decline in employment since late 2022.
Separately, in a new report, Anthropic, the AI company that built Claude, found that women and more educated, higher-paid and older employees in professions with the most exposure to AI are at higher risk of losing their jobs.
Republican pollster Micah Roberts of Public Opinion Strategies said the polling reflects “a lot of concerns that people have about this technology negatively impacting jobs and how those are especially relevant to these groups: younger voters [and] women under 50.”
“Voters’ economic circumstances and education level are also strongly dividing attitudes,” he said. “You can see clearly in this data ... how negativity toward AI drops as people become higher-educated.”
Overall, 56% of voters said they have used AI within the last two months, with 77% of professional managers, 74% of white-collar workers, 50% of blue-collar workers and 30% of retirees saying so.
“There’s clearly a work component that is tied to this,” Roberts said.
The NBC News poll surveyed 1,000 registered voters Feb. 27-March 3 via a mix of telephone interviews and an online survey sent via text message. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
