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. It was after said purchase that he began his journey from generally “liberal presenting” EV seller to the ever more unhinged MAGA troll that he became. Well, according to this study, Musk may have MAGA-ed his way out of over a million car sales, in what researchers are calling the “Musk partisan effect.” The study states:
Without the Musk partisan effect, Tesla sales between October 2022 and April 2025 would have been 67-83% higher, equivalent to 1-1.26 million more vehicles. Musk’s partisan activities also increased the sales of other automakers’ electric and hybrid vehicles 17-22% because of substitution, and undermined California’s progress in meeting its zero-emissions vehicle target.
To identify the political orientation of particular counties, the researchers looked at local voting data. Then, to track sales, they looked at vehicle registration data in those counties between 2018 and 2025. Researchers found that, up until 2022, Tesla registration trends were headed upwards. Then, while overall EV sales continued to climb, Tesla sales saw their growth cut short:
Until mid-2022, new Tesla registrations in the United States were generally increasing and following trends similar to hybrids and other EVs…After mid-2022, however, Tesla sales leveled off, while sales of hybrids, other EVs, and plug-in hybrids continued an upward trend.
While conservative counties have seen a slow increase in Tesla registrations, registrations in liberal counties saw an abrupt shift in trajectory, the study says:
The more Republican-leaning counties show a slow but increasing trend in Tesla sales over the entire sample period, whereas the more Democratic-leaning counties have a more steeply increasing trend until mid to late 2022, when Tesla sales level off and even begin to drop in the highest quintile.
Researchers do acknowledge that there are other potential factors that may have impacted the company’s collapsing sales. Those include a lack of “new Tesla models, increased EV competition from legacy automakers and new entrants, and a reliance on a flow of new EV customers rather than satisfying pent-up demand from early EV adopters,” the study says. It’s also worth noting that Tesla’s sales collapse hasn’t been entirely linear (in October, the company saw a surprise reversal, which is believed to have been caused by the expiration of the federal EV credit). However, Tesla’s problems are expected to continue, and the researchers believe that a very large factor in the derailment of “the growth trajectory of Tesla” is its CEO.
Other studies have looked at the impact of Musk’s political activities on support for his brand and EVs in general, so this is certainly not the first study to draw a correlation between the two. When Gizmodo reached out to xAI for comment, it sent us back a simple message that read: “Legacy Media Lies.” The company did not ultimately comment on the research or its findings. Gizmodo also reached out to Tesla for comment (although the company notably dissolved its PR department years ago).