'Vote red today!' Elon Musk deletes pro-Republican posts after midterm losses

Billionaire Elon Musk appears to have removed several social media posts urging Americans to vote Republican after the party suffered major setbacks in the US midterm elections.

Among the deleted posts was a pinned message published on October 29, in which Musk had urged voters to support Republican Senate candidates. He removed it early Wednesday, around the time Democrat James Talarico claimed victory in the Texas Senate race, defeating Republican Ken Paxton, who had received strong backing from Musk.

Users on X also noticed the deletions. When asked whether Musk was removing his election-related posts, his AI chatbot Grok replied, "True". It added that Musk had taken down his "Vote red today!" message after Republicans suffered major losses.

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Musk's sarcastic dig at Republican defeats

Despite removing the posts, Musk remained active on X on Wednesday, sharing his views on the election results and making sarcastic remarks about Republican defeats.

"Guess my election-interfering space lasers didn't work this time," he wrote in one post. Shortly before that, he had remarked, "Data centres in space looking pretty appealing right now."

Musk also responded to a post claiming that voters had supported Republican positions on policy issues but had still voted for Democrats.

"Voter ID failed in California," he wrote.

His remark referred to the defeat of a California ballot measure that sought to make government-issued photo identification mandatory for in-person voting. It also proposed requiring identification numbers for mail-in ballots.

Musk later returned to posting about his technology businesses, including Starlink and Grok.

His election-related posts had also appeared alongside promotional content for Grok and a message featuring a raised-eyebrow emoji in response to Michigan Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, who also won his Senate race.