Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, has built a vast campaign machine in support of former President Donald Trump, including a multi-billion dollar door-knocking operation, a social media megaphone and a $1 million sweepstakes for battleground voters.
Despite its wide-ranging scope, the operation holds a clear focus: Pennsylvania.
In recent weeks, Musk has held town halls across the state, touting its potentially decisive role in the outcome. In between appearances, he has posted updates about early voting totals and misleading election-related posts on social media platform X, which he owns.
“The reason I’m here in person is because Pennsylvania is so important to the future of the world,” Musk told a crowd last month in Folsom, a Philadelphia suburb of about 8,500 people.
It’s unclear, however, whether Musk’s splashy, deep-pocketed venture will meaningfully impact the outcome of the race in the critical state, according to experts in campaign finance and electoral politics who spoke with ABC News.
Musk jumped into discussing the election with just a handful of months until Election Day, taking aim at a state saturated with political advertising and get-out-the-vote operations, experts said. While Musk’s spending has proven immense, so too has the funding in support of Vice President Kamala Harris, they added.
Still, the late burst of spending and the appeal of Musk among some young male voters could move the needle a smidge in support of Trump, and that may prove decisive in the tightly contested state, the experts said. The 538 polling average of Pennsylvania surveys reveals the state to be a dead heat, with Trump clinging to a lead of 0.1 percentage points.
Michael Kang, a law professor at Northwestern University who focuses on campaign finance, said Musk’s efforts would not make a significant impact but could still be decisive since the state is so close.
“Overall, I don’t think this activity has a huge impact,” Kang told ABC News. “It’s easy as political scientists for us to say none of this really matters very much. In this case it really could decide the election because we’re talking about a very tight race in a single state that could swing it.”
Musk frequently posts messages in support of Trump on the social media platform X, where he boasts more than 202 million followers. At Trump rallies, Musk has occasionally appeared on stage to make an impassioned plea for votes. He has also donated nearly $75 million in support of Trump over a three-month period ending in September, government filings show.
Even more, Musk recently began a daily $1 million giveaway to registered voters in battleground states. Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner subsequently sued Musk for allegedly conducting an illegal lottery.
To enter the sweepstake, individuals must sign a petition circulated by Musk’s America PAC that pledges support for the First and Second Amendments. The only people eligible to sign are registered voters in seven key swing states, the America PAC website says.
Attorneys for Musk denied the DA’s claims of illegality and filed documents seeking to move the case to federal court, but a federal judge remanded the case back to state court. The daily lotteries are ongoing.
ABC News contacted Musk-owned companies Tesla and Space X in an effort to reach Musk for comment. He did not immediately respond. Musk’s America PAC also did not respond to a request for comment.
Experts who spoke with ABC News cast doubt on the efficacy of the giveaway, saying Musk is likely to reach highly-engaged supporters who had already intended to register and vote for Trump.
“It’s such a close state. You throw anything at the wall and hope it works. But I’m not convinced,” Ray La Raja, a political science professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, told ABC News.
Elon Musk joins former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump during a campaign rally at site of his first assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania on Oct. 5, 2024.
Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images
However, the controversial giveaway and statewide barnstorming have garnered buzz that could help motivate fans of Musk to go to the polls, the experts said. Rather than convert new Trump supporters, Musk may help turnout some voters, especially young men who make up a particularly difficult voting bloc to get into the ballot box, they added.
In that sense, Musk has bankrolled a campaign touting his own endorsement of Trump, Robin Kolodny, a professor of political science at Philadelphia-based Temple University, told ABC News.
“You need to think about Elon Musk in the same way you think about Taylor Swift,” Kolodny said. Swift, who endorsed Harris in September, prompted more than 400,000 visits to the voter registration website Vote.gov over a 24-hour period, the New York Times reported.
In his town hall events and social media posts, Musk has also spread misleading claims casting doubt on the legitimacy of the election. Speaking in Philadelphia last month, Musk baselessly accused Democrats of sending undocumented immigrants to the state to cast illegal ballots. Noncitizen voting is illegal and extraordinarily rare. Recent audits of voter rolls in states including Georgia, Ohio, and Iowa uncovered instances of noncitizen voting that overall amounted to only a tiny fraction of the states’ overall number of registered voters.
In a post on X last week, Musk cited early vote data as indication that Pennsylvania was headed toward a “decisive Republican victory.” The claim sharply diverges from the 538 polling average, which indicates a neck-and-neck race.
“It does seem like part of the strategy is to have their supporters riled up and primed to think something fraudulent happened if the election doesn’t go their way,” Kang said.
However, the strategy taken up by Musk carries risks for Trump, experts said. An intervention by the world’s wealthiest individual could drive away some voters who perceive the campaign as out of touch with everyday people’s concerns, Peter Brusoe, a professor of political science and economics at the State University of New York at Delhi, told ABC News.
“In a swing state like Pennsylvania it actually might do more harm than good,” Brusoe said. “How does Elon Musk resonate in the Pittsburgh suburbs? Do they see him as a person they can relate to?”
Speaking on a telephone town hall last month, Musk said Trump’s economic plans could cause financial pain. Spending cuts imposed by a new “government efficiency commission” would “necessarily involve some temporary hardship,” Musk said. The comments elicited criticism from Democrats.
The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In response to ABC News’ request for comment, the Harris campaign pointed to its recent door-knocking operation in Pennsylvania. On Saturday, the campaign knocked on 807,000 doors in the state, the campaign said.
While Musk’s campaign may impact the outcome in Pennsylvania, it’s ultimately impossible to determine the precise effect in the fog of a hectic campaign season, the experts said.
“There’s absolutely no way to know,” Kolodny said, pointing to the difficulty of isolating Musk’s impact amid a slew of other variables. But the outcome of the election may shape the way that observers look back on Musk’s campaign.
“We’ll find out,” Kolodny said.
ABC News’ Peter Charalambous contributed to this report.
Source: abc news
