Elon Musk’s election-doubting posts shared 9x more than his less extreme election content
An NBC News analysis of Elon Musk's tweets about the election found that he increasingly shared conspiratorial posts in recent months.
Elon Musk’s posts on his social media platform X get far more attention when they cast doubt on the integrity of the electoral process, an NBC News analysis has found.
NBC News analyzed more than 700 of Musk’s election-related posts since July collected by the NBC News Decision Desk and found that, in the cases in which he expressed suspicion about voting, sometimes pushing conspiracy theories, he received significantly more engagement — as measured by likes, comments and reposts on X — than he did when he posted on other election topics.
The difference in reach was vast: 5.2 times more likes, 4.2 times more comments and 9.1 times more reposts, when comparing the median election-doubting post to the median election post that didn’t cast doubt on the process.
That’s despite many of Musk’s claims — like alleged noncitizen voting — being false.
The analysis is a window into what’s been popular in a major corner of the X app during the final four months of the presidential election campaign. It’s also a window into what the incentives are like for Musk and potentially others as they decide what to post about.
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