Voters skeptical Trump will ever deliver his promised $5,000 dividend checks, new poll shows
President Donald Trump’s promise to send out a $5,000 check to every American adult if Republicans hang on to the House of Representatives and Senate in November’s midterms is being met with deep skepticism, a new poll has found.
The president made the pledge in his headline address at last week’s Republican National Convention in Dallas, Texas, branding it the “Trump Dividend” and telling his supporters: “If the Republicans win, you win with us.”
However, it was quickly pointed out that such a policy would cost the Treasury at least $1.3 trillion and invited accusations of bribery and questions over its legality.
Now, a new Economist/YouGov poll has found that 61 percent of likely midterms voters say they think Trump will definitely not or probably not deliver on the checks, with just 22 percent saying they believe he will and the remainder unsure either way.
The same survey found that opinion on the checks themselves was evenly divided, with 45 percent of likely voters opposed to the idea but 43 percent in favor of it.
The demographics most excited about the checks were MAGA Republicans and people aged 18 to 29, who were 69 percent and 61 percent in favor respectively.
Conversely, the groups most opposed included Democrats and over 65s (only 39 percent were in favor in each case), college graduates and liberals (37 percent) and people who voted for Kamala Harris in 2024 (30 percent).
Possible reasons for the skepticism include Trump’s failure to provide any detailed information about where the money will actually come from and the fact that the president has a track record of promising the public cash without delivering.
He did send out stimulus checks bearing his signature during the Covid-19 pandemic but more recently claimed that money saved by DOGE cuts to the federal bureaucracy and raked in by his since-blocked reciprocal tariffs policy would be paid out to voters.
Those promises would have been worth a combined $7,000 per person but neither ever came to pass.
Trump did pay out $1,776 “Warrior Dividend” checks to serving members of the military last Christmas, however, and invoked that gesture in his convention speech as proof he could deliver.
When The Independent asked the White House last week where the president hoped to source the money for his checks from, spokesperson Davis Ingle hit out at the “doomers and naysayers” he said had consistently underestimated Trump but did not provide any more concrete answers about the source of funding.
Vice President JD Vance told Fox News the day after Trump’s announcement that it could come from tariff revenue.
“We’re taking in an extraordinary amount of revenue because the president of the United States is actually standing up to both foreign companies, but also foreign countries who’ve been taking advantage of America’s workers for pretty much my entire life,” he said.
However, the estimated $132.5 billion drawn in from net customs revenue since January 2025 would not come close to the $1.3 trillion needed to make the payout.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has meanwhile told NBC News the administration will “earn the money that Donald Trump wants to pay out, not from the deficit and not from taxpayers,” likewise failing to offer specifics.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent also declined to give a definitive answer when pressed by the House Financial Services Committee Tuesday.
Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson has said the policy would require congressional approval, which the president could not hope to secure without control of both chambers, hence the victory condition he placed on the promise.
