Elon Musk Spent Nearly $500 Million On The Midterms And Lost Big-Time

Elon Musk spent nearly $500 million on Republican midterm candidates, according to FEC filings reported by Forbes, making him the election's largest individual donor by a wide margin—more than triple the roughly $160 million from second-place donors Dick and Liz Uihlein. Much of the spending was concentrated in Texas, his adopted home state, yet the returns were poor as Democrats posted strong results and several key races, including Senate contests in Mississippi and Alaska, remained undecided. The scale of the outlay underscores how central a single billionaire has become to GOP fundraising, and the weak payoff raises questions about whether mega-donor spending can reliably move voters. Watch for how Musk responds on X and whether his checkbook stays open for the next cycle.