Testing Opposition to Trump’s Funding Freeze
TO: Interested Parties
FROM: Grow Progress
DATE: Feb 24, 2025
SUBJECT: Reasons to oppose President Trump’s funding freeze
Test Details
Grow Progress ran a Rapid Message Test on February 17, 2025, to identify the most persuasive reasons to oppose and drive concern about President Trump’s executive order freezing most federal grant funding. We tested nine messages describing consequences of the freeze.
We interviewed a nationally representative sample of 6,000 respondents. Results were available on our platform within four hours.
Headlines
Opponents of President Trump’s efforts to slash government spending have several persuasive options to help make their case. Messages about the effect on food safety, Head Start and child care, and women and girls are persuasive across demographic groups and across party lines.
Those same three messages also drive concern about the funding freeze by highlighting its real world consequences and also reduce agreement that President Trump’s order to freeze federal grants is worth any pain it causes if it eliminates wasteful government spending.
At the same time, none of the messages increase agreement that President Trump’s executive order to freeze federal grants is reckless and extreme.
How to read the table below:
The questions each respondent answered are listed down the side and the messages they reacted to are across the top. Green boxes indicate statistically significant persuasive effects. Blue boxes indicate directional effects, meaning it’s more likely than not that the message is persuasive but we can’t say for sure with the available data.
Detailed Findings
- The women and girls message persuades both Trump voters and Harris voters to oppose the funding freeze.
- Two messages – women and girls and Head Start – persuade both Democrats and Republicans to oppose the funding freeze.
- Overall men are much more persuadable than women. Seven of the nine consequences persuade men to oppose the funding freeze while only one (Meals on Wheels) has a significant effect among women. This may be a function of women starting out more opposed than men.
- None of the messages persuade the youngest cohort (18-34) to a significant degree.
- Likewise, none of the messages persuade Latinos, although the sample size is small.
- Two consequences stand out as being particularly unpersuasive – climate and pandemic prevention.
Rapid Message Tests are Randomized Controlled Trials, the gold standard in scientific testing to measure the extent to which one factor causes another. Respondents in the test are assigned to either a placebo group or to a treatment group who will receive one of the messages or pieces of content you are testing. After each participant sees either the placebo or one of your treatments, they answer a set of questions. The difference between responses of people who saw the placebo and responses of people who saw any of the treatment conditions is used to determine the persuasive effect of your messages.
In a Rapid Message Test, participants are not asked about the messages they saw, they are asked about their opinions or beliefs on a topic that the messages worked to persuade them on, allowing us to observe whether or not the messages were persuasive.
