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As we’ve discussed a few times, Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s dramatic, public departure into deep right-wing political culture has been turning many buyers and shareholders off from Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA). I’ve seen multiple former Tesla fans who had stock since IPO (2010) or since the Model S was launched (2012) say that they’ve sold their Tesla stock and won’t buy another Tesla. Tesla’s market cap is still far above any other automaker in the world, but demand for Tesla’s cars seems to be taking a hit from Musk’s political adventures (among other factors).
I just discovered some data on this that came out last month. It’s not definitive evidence that people who would have bought Teslas are not doing so because of the political tweeting, but it implies that’s the case. The data, which comes from analytics firm CivicScience, shows that Tesla’s favorability dropped a whopping 23 percentage points in 6 months among liberals/Democrats, from 39% on January 24 to just 16% on July 24. That’s a huge drop in favorability.
Perhaps the even more surprising thing, though, is that Tesla’s favorability among conservatives/Republicans dropped significantly in that timeframe as well! It went from 36% on January 24 to 23% on July 24. I’m not really sure what the drop among Republicans is from, but I would assume it’s due to Tesla sales dropping, Tesla’s layoffs and/or reduction in Supercharger ambitions, nebulous plans for a cheaper model, or perhaps dissatisfaction with the Cybertruck or Cybertruck rollout. Or perhaps there are also many conservatives/Republicans not happy with Elon Musk’s tweeting as well.
What the drop in favorability among conservatives/Republicans shows us is that the entire drop in favorability among liberals/Democrats probably isn’t due to Elon Musk’s political escapades. Again, the matters above, or other matters escaping my mind right now, could be at play. However, there was a 13 percentage point drop among conservatives/Republicans versus a 23 percentage point drop among liberals/Democrats. There’s a sizable difference there, and how else can you explain it beyond reactions to Elon Musk’s political statements? Naturally, it’s only anecdotal evidence, but I’ve read many cases of this under our articles in the past 6 months.
The overall drop — among both Democrats and Republicans — is really what is probably most concerning, though. Combined, that’s a large drop in favorability. We’ve already seen Tesla sales drop in the 1st quarter and the 2nd quarter year over year. With Tesla’s favorability apparently at its lowest level in quite a while, how will 3rd quarter and 4th quarter sales turn out in the USA?
CivicScience’s findings seem to put numbers and a graph to my hunches about Tesla demand. It seems Tesla is struggling to reach the same sales levels as it had last year. That said, maybe I’m wrong, maybe “favorability” doesn’t mean anything, and maybe Tesla sales will see a strong rebound in the second half of the year. Also, maybe Tesla will make some strong strides forward with “Full Self Driving” and that will provide a burst of new consumer interest. What do you think?
This graph illustrates the woke mind virus taking over legacy media.
Same happened with online media and the education system. Then it spread to other countries.
Infection rate almost 100%.
But now it will die. pic.twitter.com/z5wMNfRym2
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 24, 2024
To end, there’s one more note from another article that stood out to me. “Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley found last year that electric vehicle ownership was strongly linked to political positions,” The Telegraph writes. “They found that one-third of all electric cars bought in America were registered in the 5pc of counties most likely to vote Democrat.”
From the abstract of the paper itself: “During our time period about half of all EVs went to the 10% most Democratic counties, and about one-third went to the top 5%. There is relatively little evidence that this correlation has decreased over time, and even some specifications that point to increasing correlation.” Here’s a graph from that study:
Graph from Energy Institute at Haas, University of California–Berkeley
Related stories:
Tesla Sales Drop 17% in California
Electric Vehicle Market Share At 21.4% In California — BEV Models #1 In 4 Vehicle Classes
Tesla Still 2nd Best Selling Auto Brand In California — Where To From Here?
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