NEW POLL: Americans Support An Energy Dominance DOE

by 
Rainey Center
, 

Washington, D.C. - With the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office facing potential cuts, Rainey Center sought to understand voter attitudes about the Department of Energy.

The latest polling found that voters are broadly supportive of the Department of Energy, though many were undecided, suggesting a lack of public attention to the topic. Voters supported common sense reforms such as merit-based hiring and promotion and standardized applications. Voters support an all of the above approach, believing the DOE should support all energy sources except for coal. Voters also support investments across all stages of technological development. Only 1 in 10 voters support cuts to the Loan Programs Office (LPO). 

Sarah Hunt, President of Rainey Center, said, “The Department of Energy, and particularly the Loan Programs Office, is a key driver of American energy dominance. We need to invest in durable, baseload energy technology, and we need a fully funded DOE to drive that innovation.”

Connor Sandagata, Senior Fellow, Public Opinion, said “What we see in the data is a clear signal: while many voters may not have deep familiarity with the Department of Energy, they support pragmatic reforms and an all of the above, more-is-better approach to energy supply. The consistency of responses across partisan lines and issue areas gives us high confidence in the robustness of these findings.”

Here are the findings:

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DOE Reforms

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  • Voters support a number of common-sense proposals to improve the Department of Energy. Voters support making retention and staffing decisions based on merit, rather than time at the department (+44 net support), working more closely with the private sector (+28), standardizing applications across the department (+41) and simplifying licensing agreements (+31).
  • Voters also support guaranteeing companies an up or down approval within a year (+25), working with the private sector to put more risk in private hands, rather than on taxpayers (+29).

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DOE Funding

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  • Voters are supportive of DOE funding at all points in the value chain, including basic science (+43 net support), directly researching energy and physics (+48), helping businesses adopt new technologies (+48) and scaling tested technologies (+32). It’s notable that scaling tested technologies scored weaker than the others.
  • Voters support an “all of the above” strategy, endorsing loans to solar (+52 net support),  wind (+39), geothermal (+39), nuclear (+17), battery storage (+39), natural gas (+46) and oil (+23). Only coal had negative support (-2). 

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LPO Support 

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  • Voters support the Loan Programs Office (LPO) (+30 net support), with bipartisan support from both Democrats (+34) and Republicans (+29). 
  • Only 11% of voters support cuts to the LPO including only 15% of Republicans. A plurality of voters (35%) support keeping funding the same and 16% support increasing funding. 

The Rainey Center conducted a survey with an online sample of 1,853 respondents fielded over web panels from May 10th to May 12th, 2025, and weighted to reflect national distributions of education, age, gender, race, and 2024 Presidential vote, with a margin of error of +/- 2.8 percentage points. Margins of error for subgroup means are larger.

Click here to read the polling data.

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