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Elon Musk’s posts on his social media platform X get far more attention when they cast doubt on the integrity of the electoral process, an NBC News analysis has found.
NBC News analyzed more than 700 of Musk’s election-related posts since July collected by the NBC News Decision Desk and found that, in the cases in which he expressed suspicion about voting, sometimes pushing conspiracy theories, he received significantly more engagement — as measured by likes, comments and reposts on X — than he did when he posted on other election topics.
The difference in reach was vast: 5.2 times more likes, 4.2 times more comments and 9.1 times more reposts, when comparing the median election-doubting post to the median election post that didn’t cast doubt on the process.
That’s despite many of Musk’s claims — like alleged noncitizen voting — being false.
The analysis is a window into what’s been popular in a major corner of the X app during the final four months of the presidential election campaign. It’s also a window into what the incentives are like for Musk and potentially others as they decide what to post about.
Musk, the world’s wealthiest person and the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, is urging people to vote for former President Donald Trump over Vice President Kamala Harris. He has donated more than $118 million to a pro-Trump super PAC he established, and he’s been running a controversial $1 million daily prize giveaway to draw attention to the election.
In addition to owning X, Musk is its biggest account, with more than 202 million followers, according to the app’s tally of his following. X has developed a clear tilt in favor of far-right users and posts since Musk bought it two years ago, according to researchers.
Baseless voter fraud claims have real-world consequences for election officials, who across the country are ramping up security measures — including bulletproof vests — at polling places in response to an increasingly hostile environment.
As the election has drawn near, Musk has ramped up his election-related posts. On multiple days in October, he posted more than 30 times a day about the election, either to cast suspicion on the process or otherwise, according to the NBC News analysis.
Many of Musk’s election-doubting posts include conspiracy theories that have repeatedly been debunked by fact-checkers, including the unfounded claim that Democrats are trying to “import” voters into the United States through increased levels of undocumented immigrants. Only citizens can vote, and to become a citizen someone must be one of the following: a lawful resident of at least five years, a spouse of a U.S. citizen, a U.S. military service member or a child of a U.S. citizen.
In a typical election-doubting post, Musk posted Oct. 5 that in the future, unless Trump wins, “your vote won’t matter, so this is therefore the last real election.” That post received 15.4 million views, 173,000 likes, 12,000 comments and 57,000 reposts, according to the publicly available data on the app.
Musk told an editor at The Atlantic in July that he would “of course” accept the results of the presidential election, according to the magazine.
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