How a blue wave crushed the tech right

Business Insider · Jacob Shamsian, Brent D. Griffiths · 2026-11-04 20:44 UTC

The Democratic wins that swept America on election night was a backlash against data centers, and a rebuke to Silicon Valley elites.

Trump's presidential term doesn't end for another two years. But the political sea change against tech titans like Elon Musk starts now.

For Musk, the $446 million he spent to elect Republicans in the midterms wasn't much. It amounted to about a twentieth of a percent of his net worth.

In the world of politics, it seemed like a tsunami. Ultimately, Musk was the one drowned by a wave.