Early Results Suggest 473 Million Dollars’ Worth of Buyer’s Remorse for Elon Musk

Early election night results for the 2026 midterms suggest a strong showing for the Democrats, and that’s putting it mildly. It’s only 9:30 p.m. ET as of this writing, and the path to victory in the House for the Republicans looks impossible. In the Senate, their odds are vanishing. The idea that some of the states still currently on the board for the Democrats—like South Carolina and Texas—would be up for grabs tonight would have sounded like the deluded fantasy of your MS NOW-addled grandma on election night in 2024. But here we are. And that makes it a good time to remember that Elon Musk paid an estimated $474 million for these results. He is the largest single donor in these midterms (whose activities are known to the public). Vote red today! — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 3, 2026 According to the New York Times, who investigated Musk’s financing on political causes during this election cycle, Musk donated, for instance, $168 million to a GOP Senate super PAC called the Senate Leadership Fund. “Almost all” of that $168 million went to support Republican Ken Paxton’s Senate effort, the Times says. He also reportedly gave $10 million to the Paxton-specific Lone Star Liberty PAC. While there’s still a conceivable universe where Paxton could win and become junior Senator in Musk’s home state, Paxton’s opponent James Talarico’s lead was downright authoritative as of this writing. If Talarico wins, he’ll be the first Democrat Senator from Texas in almost four decades. New York Times screenshot by Gizmodo To be absolutely clear, Musk’s buyer’s remorse probably hasn’t kicked in yet. If I were in his situation, having invested all that money, I would still be coping by telling myself, It’s a good thing I spent so much, it’s really close! Maybe in the end, it’ll turn out my donations made the difference. And hey, maybe that’ll be true. But for what it’s worth, that’s looking less likely at this point than the Democrats taking both houses of Congress. In fact, a Paxton victory looks less likely at the moment than a Democrat win in Kansas, where the Democratic nominee for Senate just won a county by double digits that President Trump won by 40 points in 2024. And to be clear, this was a nationwide effort for Musk, not a singleminded focus on Texas. The Times writes that he put $216 million into America PAC, his own super PAC, which supports Republican field operations nationwide. My biggest concern is that if there is a clean sweep by Democrats of the House, Senate and Presidency in 2028, they will: 1. Make DC and Puerto Rico states to gain a strong majority in the Senate. 2. Open the borders and legalize everyone living in America illegally to cement… — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 30, 2026 His current pinned tweet purports to spell out why. He claims to fear a scenario in which, over the next several years, the Democrats take over every branch of government and lock Republicans out from meaningfully voting. “This would result in America becoming a permanent one-party state and the end of democracy in any meaningful sense of the word,” Musk writes. There might be other reasons. Powerless Democrats have called for a criminal investigation into DOGE, and a probe into SpaceX’s activities with regard to the Ukraine war. It’s still early on election night, but it’s already very tough to imagine Congressional Democrats won’t have some actual firepower in the upcoming session. Whatever happens, Elon Musk forked over an amount of money that could have built a pretty nice data center in rural Ohio, another state where the GOP is not looking especially strong tonight. It seems like he does, occasionally, have flashes of self-awareness when it comes to his political activities. He spent an estimated $276 million on Trump in 2024, and may look at that as a success, but he also spent an estimated $20 million on an election last year for a Wisconsin supreme court justice who then lost, and then claimed he was—at least for a while—giving up political spending, saying “I think I’ve done enough.” Last month he said he “got carried away” with his budget-slashing DOGE activities. But he’s also sunk an enormous amount of his dignity into his effort to please President Trump. Politics-wise, he’s paid the better part of $1 billion for a first-class, one-way ticket on the S.S. MAGA, and if I were him I’d be counting the lifeboats right about now.