Americans oppose spending $1 billion on White House ballroom 68% to 21%

A preview from our May Strength In Numbers/Verasight poll

I don’t usually release results for individual poll questions early, but these days, the best course of action in journalism is to publish anything interesting before the news cycle kills it.

So this is a short preview post of this month’s Strength In Numbers/Verasight poll release. This full poll will be released on Monday.

---

Strength In Numbers is a reader-supported newsletter on polling, elections, and democracy. If you want more data-driven independent political journalism, join the community as a paying subscriber for $10/month or $90/year, and get access to weekly exclusive posts and support independent polls like these ones.

---

Here is the big finding: Americans overwhelmingly reject the idea of spending taxpayer money on President Trump’s new White House ballroom. Overall, 68% of adults said they opposed spending taxpayer money on security upgrades for the ballroom. A striking 57% oppose it strongly. Just 21% of adults said they support it.

In our May survey — fielded May 18-19, 2026, among 1,520 U.S. adults — we asked respondents about a Republican proposal to put $1 billion in taxpayer funding toward security upgrades for Trump’s new ballroom project, which is being built next door to the White House. Trump originally promised the ballroom would be paid for entirely by private donors.

The more striking result is in the partisan breakdown. Even Republicans don’t like the plan, with 42% in support of the funding and 44% oppose to it.

Among political independents, 61% oppose the funding, including 52% who oppose it strongly. Just 14% are in favor, with the remaining 24% saying they “don’t know.” Unsurprisingly, Democrats are all but unanimous, with 86% strongly opposed.

In our new poll, 51% of Americans say prices or the economy are their number one issue, and President Trump’s net approval rating across both issues is -36, with 66% opposed and 30% in favor.

Americans report high levels of anxiety about both their personal finances and the nation’s economy as a whole. At a moment when voters are already skeptical of Trump’s priorities, asking taxpayers to spend $1 billion on a ballroom project that Trump said private donors would fund is exactly the kind of thing that reinforces voters’ anxieties. Thus, an unusually bipartisan majority of Americans do not want to pay for it.

---

The May 2026 Strength In Numbers/Verasight poll surveyed 1,520 U.S. adults from May 18-19, 2026. The margin of sampling error is ±2.7%.