When it comes to the people most likely to buy his cars, Musk has made a lot of enemies. A study makes a plausible case that it hurt sales.
It’s been widely speculated that Elon Musk’s right-wing political activities have had a deeply depressive effect on his company’s bottom line. In the midst of his turn to the right (a journey that has included supporting Donald Trump’s campaign for president and then working for Trump as part of his administration’s DOGE initiative), his crown jewel, Tesla, has suffered from an unfortunate slump in sales numbers. Now, economic researchers believe they’ve found concrete proof that Musk’s political activity over the years has led to a loss of interest in his company.
A new study published this week by researchers with Yale University and the National Bureau of Economic Research claims to have identified a “causal effect of Musk’s partisan activities on Tesla sales.” You might think that sort of thing would be quite difficult to track, but, complex math aside, the researchers seem to have come up with a fairly simple formula for assessing the dissolution of support for Musk’s brand. They did it by looking at support for Tesla as a brand in predominantly Democratic counties before and after October of 2022. What happened in October of 2022? You might recall that Musk bought a little website called Twitter and began doing all sorts of creative things to it.
Looking back, the Twitter purchase really does seem like the critical demarcation point in Elon’s political transformation.
