Project 2025 is well known and extremely unpopular with voters

Nearly all voters familiar with Project 2025, a conservative policy roadmap that Vice President Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party have used to criticize former President Donald Trump, view the plan negatively, a new NBC News poll shows.

About 57% of registered voters say they view Project 2025 negatively, with 51% saying they view the proposal “very” negatively and another 7% saying they view it “somewhat” negatively. Only 4% of voters said they viewed the Conservative policy plan favorably.

Among independents, 52% say they have a negative view of the plan, while 85% of Democrats say the same. About 33% of Republicans say they also view the plan negatively, with just 7% saying they have a positive view of the plan, something Trump has criticized since Democrats stepped up their efforts to balance it and Project 2025 connect.

Voters who identify as “MAGA Republicans” said they view Project 2025 in a slightly more positive light: 28% said they had a negative opinion and 9% said they viewed the plan positively.

It was the least popular topic in the NBC News poll in September – a group that included socialism, capitalism, both presidential and vice presidential candidates, the Republican and Democratic parties, Taylor Swift and Elon Musk.

Democrats have sought to link Trump to Project 2025, a conservative policy roadmap from the Heritage Foundation that aims to lay the foundation for a future Republican administration. The plan is mentioned by name in campaign ads by Harris and by Democrats on the ballot.

The conservative plan is linked to a handful of senior former Trump administration officials — such as former Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought and former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson — and is supported by pro-Trump and conservative organizations such as Turning Point USA supports. America First Legal, a prominent pro-Trump group led by former Trump administration adviser Stephen Miller, was originally listed on its advisory board but no longer is.

But Trump, who praised the group's preparatory work in a speech in April 2022, has sought to distance himself from the political plan since early July. Harris and other top Democrats referred to the 900-page document, written in part by former Trump staffers, as “Trump's Project 2025 agenda,” with party leaders forming the “Stop Project 2025 Task Force.” Several speakers at the Democratic National Convention this summer carried a textbook-sized copy of the plan to the stage as they denounced it in speeches, and Harris also mentioned it by name in her speech at the convention.

The Trump campaign said in a statement in July that it “welcomes” reports of the group's “demise.” In the debate with Harris this month, Trump presented a more mixed view of the Project 2025 proposals, which he said contained “some good, some bad,” but continued to say he had nothing to do with it.

“I don’t know anything about Project 2025,” Trump said on Truth Social in July. “I have no idea who is behind this.”

The NBC News national poll of 1,000 registered voters — 870 reached by cell phone — was conducted Sept. 13-17 and has an overall margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.