(Bloomberg) — Elon Musk asked his more than 95 million Twitter followers whether they trusted billionaires or politicians less, in his latest poll on the social media site. By a wide margin, his social media respondents so far say they back the rich more than the elected.
With roughly 20 hours remaining, more than 75% of respondents voted politicians as less trustworthy than billionaires from well over 1 million votes as of 11:15pm Eastern time. Musk, the world’s richest person, said that the use of the word billionaire as a pejorative was “morally wrong & dumb” if a person was a billionaire for building products that make millions of people happy.
He later dared Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the New York Democrat who has sparred with Musk on Twitter, to run the same poll with her own followers.
Last month, Musk made a $44 billion offer to buy Twitter. Weeks before the offer, Musk asked users in a Twitter poll if they wanted an edit button. In 2021, he polled Twitter users on whether he should sell a 10% stake in Tesla, which a majority supported.
(Updates with latest polling figures in second paragraph.)
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