Views are considerably more favorable in recent years--in fact, the April 2017 survey is the first one in which more than half chose "genuinely in need." Why the change? Several possibilities occur to me:
1. Welfare may be less strongly associated with race in the public mind. At one time, blacks were overrepresented in news stories on poverty and welfare. I don't know about more recent research, but it seems possible that news organizations became more aware of this and made efforts to avoid it. My impression is that there is more attention to small-town and rural (that is, mostly white) poverty than there used to be. If there has been a change in media coverage, public perceptions might have followed.
2. Animosity to blacks is declining, so even if welfare is still associated with race, people may not be as bothered by the idea that the government is spending to help blacks. The idea that there has been real decline in anti-black prejudice is not popular in sociology now, but there's a lot of evidence for it.
3. It may be a result of changes in anti-poverty programs. There's been a big growth in the Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit, which are popular, rather than AFDC/TANF, which are not. Also, my guess is that welfare programs are administered more efficiently now--one thing that computers are good for is keeping track of people and money.
Notes:
1. See this post for a related question.
2. I noticed a poll from 2013 which showed 30% "genuinely in need" and 56% "taking advantage"--more like the 1990s than the other surveys from the 2010s. But on reading the fine print, I found that it was a sample of Hispanics only. Hispanics have more negative views of welfare than non-Hispanics? Apparently yes--I checked one of the other recent surveys and it was the case there.
[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]
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