The Tesla brand is attracting more and more Republicans

A new survey shows that Tesla is gaining steam as a brand with Republicans after being a darling of the Democrats for years.

In general, Tesla buyers, and electric car buyers, have always been more likely to be Democrat than Republican.

Left-leaning individuals are generally more environmentally cautious, though climate change concerns have been gradually gaining ground on the right in the last few years.

But EV buyers tending to be more Democrat than Republican is also due to the market incentives.

That’s due to blue states like California implementing stronger EV incentives to encourage buying electric vehicles than red states.

California is still Tesla’s biggest market in the US, but since the automaker moved its headquarters to Texas, the automaker is making progress with Republicans.

A new survey shows an important three-point increase in Republicans considering a Tesla as their next car over just a month (via CNN):

Surveys by research firm Morning Consult show that in January about 22% of Democrats were considering buying a Tesla, while 17% of Republicans were looking to purchase one. And that gap has been closing — Republican consideration of buying a Tesla has risen about 3 percentage points just since December’s survey. 

That’s when it comes to jumping into action and actually planning to buy a car, but even more surprising, Republicans are now more trusting of Tesla as a brand than Democrats:

And Republicans are slightly more likely to trust the Tesla brand, 27% compared to 25% among Democrats.

This comes as Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been ramping up his criticism of the Biden administration over the last few months.

Over the years, Musk was mostly staying away from politics, and while he did have some criticism of the government during Trump’s administration, it doesn’t compare to his current comments on Biden, who he even called “a damp sock puppet in human form.”

This rhetoric is making him increasingly popular in conservative circles and alienating some long-time progressive supporters – many of whom now report supporting Tesla and not Musk.

Electrek’s Take

The thing is that buying an electric vehicle makes sense regardless of your political views.

EVs are simply a better transport solution than vehicles with an internal combustion engine.

It just looks like if your political views were creating some hurdles to buying EVs, it’s becoming easier for you to jump over those.

However, on the other hand, I’m definitely hearing more and more left-leaning people saying that they wouldn’t buy a Tesla because of how Musk is conducting himself these days. That’s certainly a consequence of how polarizing political discourse has become over the last few years. There’s this constant aura of “if you are not on my team, you are the enemy.”

That’s their choice, and fortunately, there are plenty of electric vehicles for them to choose from.