President Trump's pledge to send $5,000 checks to Americans if Republicans hold onto both chambers of Congress in the midterms is running into voter skepticism, according to a new Economist/YouGov poll. Just 21% of registered voters said they believe Trump will definitely or probably follow through on the payments, while 57% said he probably or definitely will not. Even among Republicans, only 45% expect the payments to materialize.
Opinion on the payments themselves is split, with 45% opposed and 43% in favor.
Part of the skepticism stems from shifting details about who would actually qualify. Trump has at different points described the payout as going to every adult U.S. citizen and, separately, to every U.S. citizen, a distinction that affects roughly 73 million people, since it determines whether children are included. The cost difference is significant: distributing $5,000 to the roughly 270 million adult citizens in the country would cost an estimated $1.3 trillion, while extending it to all 343 million U.S. citizens would push the price tag to about $1.7 trillion, a $400 billion gap.
White House spokesperson Davis Ingle has defended the plan amid the shifting details.
The proposal follows a pattern from Trump's earlier dividend pledges that did not pan out. In 2025 he floated a $5,000 DOGE dividend tied to unrealized government savings identified by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, and separately promised a tariff dividend of more than $2,000 per person that was ultimately scaled back to $100 billion in refunds rather than direct payments.