Elon Musk's $20 Million In Wisconsin May Have Backfired

Democrats have performed much better the last few years in special elections, generally over-performing — but it ended up not spilling over to 2024,

GOP pollster Robert Blizzard said

Charlie Kirkconservative activist

I want to examine what we need to do as a party and a movement to motivate people,

Kirk added

John BermancNN anchor

So if there’s one big lesson to take away from Wisconsin is Elon Musk does not help Republicans when he shows up. If anything, the data suggests that he hurts them,

Enten told CNN’s John Berman

Elon Musk, simply put, is an unpopular guy. He is political poison,

Enten stressed

The way Trump has singled out individuals and institutions has prevented coordination of people in opposition to him,

said Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Dartmouth College

Elon Muskbillionaire

A seemingly small election could determine the fate of Western civilization, ... I think it matters for the future of the world."

But Musk's involvement dialed those dynamics up to 11 ... the billionaire said Tuesday in a last-ditch call to voters on his social media site X

It looks like the electoral playing field is tilting against Republicans quite dramatically,

Nyhan said

At most, this outcome shifted one percentage point,

said Charles Franklin, a law professor and pollster at Marquette University in Milwaukee

I’m honestly shocked. I thought we had it in the bag. I thought [Musk] was going to be an asset for this race. People love Trump, but maybe they don’t love everybody he supports. Maybe I have blinders on,

Pam Van Handel, chairwoman of the Republican Party of Wisconsin’s Outagamie County, told Politico

I don't think that we should get it twisted. I don't think that this was a blue wave, as much as it was a recognition that Susan was the fair, impartial candidate that was going to be the right person for the Supreme Court,

Guarasci said

I don't think it's a shift left. I think that it's a shift to sanity,

Patrick Guarasci, a campaign strategist for Crawford, told the Washington Examiner in an interview

Elon Muskbillionaire

This was the most important thing,

Musk wrote as he shared a post from his super PAC about a ballot measure adding a requirement for voter ID to the State Constitution

Chuck Schumersenator

It was a political warning shot from the American people,

Senator Chuck Schumer, the minority leader, said in a speech from the Senate floor on Wednesday

It’s a fork-in-the-road moment. The more political he gets with DOGE the more the brand suffers, there is no debate,

wrote Dan Ives, an analyst at Wedbush Securities, who has been one of the most steadfast believers in Tesla on Wall Street

If there’s no staff, how do you allocate the rest of this money

said Mark Wolfe, the executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors Association, a nonprofit that represents state aid officials in Washington

That’s where a lot of the DOGE effort is having the largest negative impacts,

Newton said

In this short period of time since the last election, we saw in these Florida elections, these bright red districts, the margins cut more than in half. And it’s because folks are rejecting the Trump-Musk agenda,

DelBene said

Florida’s resounding Republican victories send a clear message: Americans are fired up to elect leaders who will fight for President Trump’s agenda and reject the Democrats’ failed policies,

Marinella said

Virginia voters are smart enough to understand that they’re electing a governor,

said another GOP operative in the state

I think a spring, off-year election with the deck stacked against you isn’t necessarily a fair analysis of Musk’s impact,

said one Virginia-based Republican strategist about whether the party would be wise to draw conclusions from the Wisconsin Supreme Court race