Elon Musk’s at least $446 million midterm spending left Democrats in control of the House and Senate, while his preferred candidates lost Texas’s Senate and governor races.
Nearly half of Musk’s spending, roughly $224 million, went to Texas, where Tesla operates its largest US vehicle factory outside Austin and SpaceX launches rockets from its Starbase complex in South Texas.
Musk had made himself the pivotal Republican donor of the 2026 campaign, spending at least $446 million to $474 million, an unprecedented sum for an individual donor in a US election cycle. Musk moved to Texas in 2020 and shifted the headquarters of Tesla, SpaceX and X to the state. He became a trillionaire in June when SpaceX went public and had at least $898 billion in net worth as of the election.
In September, Musk donated $158 million to Senate Republicans’ main super PAC to support Ken Paxton, his preferred Republican candidate for the Texas Senate seat. His America PAC also spent over $47 million against James Talarico, the Democratic nominee, while Musk spent at least $45 million supporting Paxton in Texas.
Talarico defeated Paxton, flipping the Senate seat to the Democrats and becoming the first Democratic Texas senator elected in 36 years. In his victory speech, he likened the result to David defeating Goliath. He said his campaign had faced “The richest man in the world, the most powerful man in the world, and the entire Washington D.C. establishment.”
The gubernatorial contest brought a second defeat for Musk’s Texas candidates. The Associated Press called the race for Democrat Gina Hinojosa at 4:17am on November. Hinojosa defeated the incumbent Republican governor, Greg Abbott, whom Musk had backed.
Hinojosa had campaigned against generous corporate subsidies and Musk himself. She called for a moratorium on new data centers, an end to industry tax breaks and a requirement that developers pay their full electricity costs. Talarico had also campaigned for tighter regulation of data-center development.
The losses reached beyond Texas. Vivek Ramaswamy, Musk’s preferred Republican candidate for governor in Ohio, also lost. By Wednesday morning, Republicans backed by America PAC had lost 29 contests and won just three, with 12 still uncalled. America PAC spent nearly $87 million across 44 federal races, and more than $80 million, or 93% of its spending, went towards races Republicans lost.
Musk had spent more than $290 million in the 2024 elections, with the vast majority directed towards helping President Donald Trump. On Wednesday morning after the election, he responded on X with a joke about the result: “Guess my election-interfering space lasers didn't work this time.” He later posted: “Data centers in space looking pretty appealing right now.”
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