Elon Musk has urged American voters to choose Republican candidates in the US midterm election, marking the first time a head of a social media company has explicitly pushed people to vote a certain way.
Musk, who took over Twitter Inc. last month, tweeted to his 115 million followers that “independent-minded voters” should vote for a Republican congress.
“Shared power curbs the worst excesses of both parties, therefore I recommend voting for a Republican Congress, given that the presidency is Democratic,” he wrote in a tweet that he pinned to the top of his profile.
“To be clear, my historical party affiliation has been Independent, with an actual voting history of entirely Democrat until this year.”
While former chief executive at Twitter, Jack Dorsey, and Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg have previously discussed political preferences or given money to political initiatives, they have never openly pushed voters one way or the other.
Musk is the world’s richest person. Last month, he bought Twitter for $44 billion and went on to sack half of its staff and announced plans to charge $8 for verification on the platform. He also cracked down on comedians parodying him on Twitter, suspending the likes of Kathy Griffin.
A recent report from Digital Planet found that since Musk’s takeover of Twitter, the quality of the conversation on the platform has decayed, “with more extremists and purveyors of hateful content testing the boundaries of what Twitter might allow”.
This is particularly concerning as the US midterm election is currently underway.
In May this year, Musk tweeted that could no longer support the Democrats and would vote Republican.
“In the past I voted Democrat, because they were (mostly) the kindness party. But they have become the party of division & hate, so I can no longer support them and will vote Republican,” he wrote.