Of 106 House and Senate candidates who received his backing, 19 had won by around noon EST on Wednesday, all in seats Republicans were expected to retain, while 47 had lost and 40 contests remained uncalled.
Elon Musk has deleted social media posts urging voters to back Republican candidates in the US midterms, according to the Times of India, after Democrats made significant gains and secured control of both chambers of Congress. The removed posts included a pinned message from 29 October calling on voters to elect Republican senators and an Election Day appeal reading “Vote red today!”. Forbes, cited in the report, said Musk took down the pinned post early on Wednesday, around the time Democrat James Talarico claimed victory in the Texas Senate race.
The Associated Press called Texas for Talarico shortly after 11pm EST on Tuesday, confirming the defeat of Republican Ken Paxton, who had received substantial financial backing from Musk. Musk's chatbot Grok confirmed the deletion after an X user asked whether posts related to the election were being removed. “True,” Grok replied late on Wednesday morning, saying Musk had deleted the “Vote red today!” message after results showed “major Republican losses”. The report notes that the Election Day appeal was among his few direct interventions on the platform urging support for Republicans.
The scale of the outlay is the story's central fact. According to the report, Musk channelled at least $458 million into Republican-aligned causes, making him the largest individual donor in modern US political history during an election cycle. Federal Election Commission filings cited by the publication showed around $216 million went directly to his super PAC, America PAC, which financed turnout operations, ground campaigning and targeted digital advertising. Federal Election Commission data put his spending through super PACs and other individual contributions at around $474 million, while the New York Times estimated he spent approximately $224 million in Texas alone. Of 106 House and Senate candidates who received his backing, 19 had won by around noon EST on Wednesday, all in seats Republicans were expected to retain, while 47 had lost and 40 contests remained uncalled.
Musk responded on Wednesday with sarcasm rather than contrition. “Guess my election-interfering space lasers didn't work this time,” he wrote in one post, and later remarked: “Voter ID failed in California,” referring to the defeat of a ballot measure that would have required photo identification at the polls or identification numbers for postal voting. He subsequently returned to posting about Starlink and Grok, according to The Daily Beast and Futurism.
The results coincided with a fall in the value of his companies. Forbes estimated his net worth at $878 billion on Wednesday, after it fell by $23.7 billion during the morning as markets reacted to the prospect of a Democratic-controlled Congress. Tesla shares fell 3.3% and SpaceX shares 3.8%, wiping out more than $120 billion in value, according to Bloomberg, which cited a Financial Times estimate that Musk had lost around $30 billion in personal wealth. The report links the declines to concerns about a possible regulatory slowdown in data centre construction. According to OpenSecrets, Musk spent about $291 million in the 2024 cycle.
What remains unconfirmed is the precise final tally of his spending and the full accounting of the uncalled races. The report does not establish whether the deletions reflect a change in political posture or a narrower communications decision, and Grok's account is a company chatbot's summary rather than a statement from Musk himself.
