The White House has spent the last five months framing AI deregulation as an economic weapon against China. Strip the guardrails, let American companies run, outpace Beijing. That was the pitch. Clean, simple, easy to sell.

One problem: the people who put Trump in office are not buying it.

A new Politico poll published Friday found that Trump voters are broadly supportive of government oversight of AI and deeply split over whether the technology's benefits outweigh its risks. The numbers are not ambiguous. They are a political problem.

Here is the core tension: non-MAGA Trump voters (the persuadable middle that won him the election) were more likely than MAGA loyalists to say AI will eliminate more jobs than it creates, with 51 percent holding that view. Even among MAGA diehards, the number was not far behind. The fear of mass job loss is not a progressive talking point. It is sitting inside the Republican coalition, growing louder.

The China Factor Is Real, but It Cuts Both Ways

The poll exposed a genuine split inside the GOP on AI. One faction, call them the China hawks, wants maximum deregulation so American companies can outpace Chinese competitors. Their argument: if we slow down, DeepSeek and Huawei win. This is the argument the White House has been making and it resonates with a slice of the base that views AI through a national security lens.

But the other faction, the populist base, sees AI as the next version of the same trade deals and automation waves that hollowed out manufacturing towns. They want regulation. They want protection. And they are not a small minority. The poll found broad support among Trump voters for government oversight of AI companies.

This creates an impossible legislative math problem. The administration cannot simultaneously be the party of AI deregulation to please tech donors and the party of worker protection to keep its base. Those two positions are in direct conflict. The poll just made that conflict visible.

Why This Matters Right Now

This polling data lands at a very specific moment. Colorado just introduced SB 189, its third attempt to rewrite the nation's first AI regulation law. The DOJ joined a lawsuit against Colorado filed by Elon Musk's xAI alleging the state law is unconstitutional. Nine in ten US policy insiders told a separate survey this week that AI must be regulated and governments are falling short.

Meanwhile, 1,208 AI bills have been introduced in state legislatures this year, a record. A 99-1 Senate vote already rejected federal preemption of state AI laws. The states are not waiting. And now the poll numbers suggest the voters are not waiting either.

The political calculus here is not abstract. Midterms are approaching. Every Republican running in a swing district now has to answer a question their party leadership has been dodging: are you with the tech companies or with the workers who are scared of losing their jobs to AI?

The Second-Order Problem

There is a deeper issue the poll surfaces. The Trump administration's entire AI strategy assumes public enthusiasm for the technology. The executive orders stripping safety requirements, the push to prevent states from regulating AI, the cozy relationship with OpenAI and xAI: all of it is built on the premise that AI is popular and deregulation is what voters want.

The Politico poll suggests that premise is wrong. At minimum, it is more complicated than the White House assumed. When your own voters are telling pollsters they want the government to oversee AI companies, the deregulation playbook starts to look like a liability rather than an asset.

This does not mean the administration will change course. But it does mean that the political cost of the current course just got higher. And in an election year, political costs have a way of becoming policy shifts.

What to watch: whether any Republican candidates start breaking with the White House on AI regulation ahead of the midterms. The poll numbers give them permission. The question is whether anyone takes it.

First reported by Politico. Supporting data from PRNewswire (AI regulation polling) and Colorado Sun (SB 189).