Tesla Learns Hard Lesson: Go Anti-Woke, Go Broke
When CEO Elon Musk took a hard turn to the right, the number of Democrats buying Teslas dropped 60 percent.
By
Collin Woodard

Things are not going well at Tesla right now. The stock is down more than $100 per share year-to-date, as many as 20,000 people are set to lose their jobs, the Cybertruck keeps breaking, operating profit is expected to be down 40 percent when it’s announced later today and the $25,000 electric vehicle that Tesla has reportedly been working on is apparently canceled. As the Wall Street Journal reports, some but not all of that stress can be attributed to Tesla alienating what was previously its most valuable demographic — Democrats.

Historically, Democrats have bought Teslas in significantly larger numbers than people with other political affiliations. As Elon Musk has moved to the right, interacting with far-right accounts, promoting race “science,” anti-Semitism, homophobia, transphobia and complaining about the “woke mind virus,” though, the number of Democrats interested in giving him their money has dropped significantly. Late last year, that figure reportedly dropped by more than 60 percent.

Unfortunately for Tesla, while Republicans have embraced Musk’s political heel-turn, they haven’t necessarily been buying his cars in large enough numbers to offset the sharp drop in interest from left-leaning people. That’s likely due in part to Republican politicians using EVs as an example of how Democrats want to destroy the auto industry, control your life and force you to own nothing and eat bugs.

While surveys have found lower consumer interest in Teslas ever since Musk bought Twitter, when it came to actual sales, Democrats didn’t really start to drop off significantly until last October. They made up 40 percent of Tesla’s sales for the 2022 model year and 39 percent for 2023, yet when the 2024 model year Teslas went on sale, the number of Democrats in the mix dropped to 15 percent.

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