On Elon Musk’s X, Republicans go viral as Democrats disappear
A Washington Post analysis found that Republicans are posting more, getting followed more and going viral more now that the world’s richest Trump supporter is running the show.
The top political accounts on X have seen their audiences crumble in the months before the election, a signal of the platform’s diminishing influence and usefulness to political discourse under billionaire owner Elon Musk, a Washington Post analysis found.
Politicians on both sides of the aisle have struggled to win the attention they once enjoyed on the platform formerly known as Twitter, according to The Post’s review of months of data for the 100 top-tweeting congressional accounts, including senators, representatives and committees, equal parts Democrat and Republican.
But some of their tweets are still going mega-viral — virtually all of them from Republicans, the analysis shows. The Republicans have also seen huge spikes in follower counts over the Democrats, and their tweets have collectively received billions more views.
X has seen a dramatic exodus of users since Musk took over in 2022, according to independent analysts such as Edison Research, which said in March that X’s usage in the United States had dropped 30 percent since last year. The investment firm Fidelity this month estimated that X’s value has plunged by about 80 percent since Musk’s takeover.
“It’s not a right-leaning platform, it’s right-led,” said Shannon McGregor, an associate professor at the University of North Carolina who studies social media platforms.
“In the past political actors on both sides saw Twitter as the place to go to get news coverage and a sense of how people were reacting … but it doesn’t have that real political centrality anymore,” she added. “Now, for Republicans, it’s become a place for partisan signaling — to the leader of the party; to the owner, who’s very close to him; to each other — that I’m a good Republican, and this is what that looks like now.”
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