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Twitter Poll, Intended to Expose a Poll by Elon Musk as ‘Phony’ and ‘Ridiculous’ Backfires Spectacularly

Published: May 28, 2022
Elon-Musk-Twitter-AOC-rivarly-David-Weissman-Getty-Images-1240649087
This illustration photo taken May 13, 2022, displays Elon Musk’s Twitter account with a Twitter logo in the background in Los Angeles. (Image: CHRIS DELMAS/AFP via Getty Images) In an early morning tweet, Musk said the $44 billion takeover was "temporarily on hold," pending questions over the social media company's estimates of the number of fake accounts or "bots." That sent Twitter's stock plunging 25 percent. (Photo by Chris DELMAS / AFP) (Photo by CHRIS DELMAS/AFP via Getty Images)

On May 26, controversial billionaire Elon Musk polled his 95.5 million followers via Twitter asking “who do you trust less” politicians or billionaires?

After garnering almost 3.4 million responses the results indicated that 75.7 percent of respondents trusted politicians less than billionaires. 

In a subsequent tweet Musk dared U.S. representative for New York’s 14th congressional district, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) to conduct the same poll with her followers.

While AOC has so far ignored the billionaires challenge, David Weissman, who describes himself as a “former Trump supporter, and proud Liberal Dem”  in his Twitter bio and is an opinion writer for Occupy Democrats, took Musk’s challenge to heart, conducting a poll of his own.

“Let’s prove how phony the right’s ridiculous polls are by doing one of our own. Who do you trust more @elonmusk @AOC,” Weissman tweeted to his over 339-thousand followers. 

After seven hours and attracting almost 143-thousand responses the results were not what Weissman was expecting. Some 82.7 percent of respondents indicated that they trusted Musk over AOC. 

Following the results Weissman displayed integrity tweeting, “Not sure how this poll flipped but I won’t delete it and will take the L.”

While Twitter polls are not considered to be accurate opinion polls by many, and it is unknown just how many bots participate, they may provide insight into users’ attitudes and can be considered a rough reflection of the prevailing sentiment, at least among respondents. 

Musk and AOC continue to butt heads 

The rivalry between Musk and AOC appears to be heating up. The two have butted heads on several occasions in the past and most recently AOC declared she will be ditching her Tesla for an electric vehicle made by unionized domestic workers. 

AOC purchased her Tesla Model 3 when the COVID-19 pandemic emerged in 2020. “At the time, it was the only EV that could get me from New York to Washington on like one or one and a half charges,” she told Bloomberg on May 24, adding that, “I would love to switch.”

When asked what she thought about Musk’s tweets about voting Republican for the first time she said, “He’s a billionaire. I could care less what he thinks.”

Last month, after AOC appeared to refer to him as a “billionaire with an ego problem” Musk trolled her saying “stop hitting on me” to which AOC quickly responded that she was referring to another tech billionaire, Mark Zuckerberg. 

“Tired of having to collectively stress about what explosion of hate crimes is happening bc some billionaire with an ego problem unilaterally controls a massive communication platform and skews it because Tucker Carlson or Peter Thiel took him to dinner and made him feel special,” Ocasio-Cortez said in the tweet.