Things are not going well at Tesla at the moment. The stock has fallen more than $100 per share since the start of the year, and up to 20,000 people are expected to lose their jobs Cybertruck breaks all the timeoperating profits are expected to fall by 40 percent when it is announced today, and the $25,000 electric vehicle that Tesla was reportedly working on is apparently being discontinued. As the Wall Street Journal ReportsSome, but not all, of these pressures can be attributed to Tesla alienating its most valuable demographic to date – Democrats.
Historically, Democrats have purchased significantly more Teslas than people with other political affiliations. However, as Elon Musk has moved to the right, interacting with far-right accounts, promoting racial “science,” anti-Semitism, homophobia, transphobia, and complaining about the “woke mind virus,” the number of Democrats interested in doing so is to give him their opinion, money has increased significantly. At the end of last year, this number is said to have fallen by more than 60 percent.
Unfortunately for Tesla, while Republicans have welcomed Musk’s policy about-face, they haven’t necessarily bought his cars in sufficient numbers to offset the sharp decline in interest from the left-leaning population. That’s probably partly because Republican politicians are using electric vehicles 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 polls have shown lower consumer interest in Teslas since Musk took over Twitter, Democrats only saw significant drops in actual sales last October. They accounted for 40 percent of Tesla sales in the 2022 model year and 39 percent in 2023, but when Teslas came out in the 2024 model year, the share of Democrats in the mix fell to 15 percent.
Even if Republicans and independents buy more Teslas, Overall, sales still fell in the first quarter, with deliveries falling even more significantly. One didn’t necessarily have to wait for first-quarter results to see this, however, as Tesla sales in California rose 43 percent in the third quarter but fell 10 percent in the fourth quarter.
For years, Tesla had the exclusivity of its Supercharger network as its trump card. Other electric vehicles might have been suitable for a road trip on paper, but the non-Tesla charging network is still unreliable at best. So if you planned to use your electric vehicle for more than just a daily driver, Tesla was still the best option available. It may be a coincidence, but late autumn is also the time when this became clear Every automaker in the US would switch to Tesla’s North American charging standard and would have access to the Supercharger network. By allowing non-Teslas to use its charging network, Tesla may have finally freed Democrats who would previously have been hesitant to buy a Tesla to instead buy their next electric vehicle from a competitor.
However, Democratic sales have recovered somewhat since last fall. By the end of February, they again accounted for 35 percent of Tesla’s sales mix. “Elon hasn’t been in the press as much as before,” said Strategic Vision’s Alexander Edwards Wall Street Journal. “That lack of negative press and antics combined with EV [shoppers] Today…they are buying a variety of electric vehicles and finding that the Model 3 and Y are still, in their opinion, the best choice when it comes to value.”
If that’s true, we’ll be particularly interested to see what more current numbers look like. The Cybertruck has quickly become a national embarrassmentone of which even was defeated by a simple car wash. And with more negative headlines expected with today’s earnings conference call, Musk isn’t exactly doing a good job of staying out of the news at the moment, which Edwards says can only mean bad news for Tesla.