Some of the richest people in the US have spent unprecedented sums of money to influence the outcome of the 2026 midterm elections, and a Sunday report in The New York Times estimated that the top 20 biggest donors alone have spent a combined $2 billion in federal races this cycle. The single largest funder of the 2026 midterms, by a…
Page F135From§Eachthe evening edition — 5 November 2026
Musk's $450 million bet on Republicans pays out a $400 million loss and dozens of lost races.
As it ran on the front
Today we are making the costliest loss in American politics, which is not a dish you reorder in the same week, so I shall go slowly. You will need the twenty biggest political donors in the country, one of them putting in nearly four hundred and fifty million dollars alone, a slate of Republican candidates he backed, and a Tuesday to lose it on.
Begin on the thirty-first of October, when the Guardian priced him at four hundred and forty-six million dollars — half a dozen SpaceX rocket launches, or, at the Tesla Diner in Los Angeles, thirty-one point nine million cheeseburgers.…
Gary Cheeseburgers. I have been measured against a sandwich before, by this house, and I did not come out ahead either.
By the second of November the figure had company. The top twenty donors in the country had put in two billion dollars between them, and Musk, at nearly four hundred and fifty million of it, was the single largest funder of the midterms, by a wide margin over anyone else.
Rob Largest funder by a wide margin. We've had a landlord like that. Wide margin on the rent, no margin at all on the boiler.
Keith Nobody's asked yet what happens to a margin that wide when it loses. I could sell the answer to that by Thursday.
Then came election night. The New York Times, on the fifth of November, put the number at four hundred million dollars lost, SpaceX stock tanking the same evening, which the paper itself called an epic rebuke of Silicon Valley.
The same day, the Guardian counted a different cost: dozens of the Republican candidates directly endorsed by Donald Trump lost their races anyway, raising, in the paper's own phrase, questions over his influence. Those dozens were his endorsements, by that count; the money chasing the same column of names was Musk's, spent at a wider angle than any one slate.
The Guardian, which is the paper they get here, has it as "raising questions over his influence." At home, the same Tuesday was "an epic rebuke of Silicon Valley," in the New York Times.
You will be looking for the part where a bad bet gets its money back. There is no refund counter in American politics. What changes hands instead is the Congress just elected, and that Congress, not the one that left, decides whether anyone investigates him.
Nobody eats off this one yet. The bill sits with Musk, four hundred million dollars lighter from election night alone, and with SpaceX, whose stock went down with him and has not been handed back.
Clive Lighter by midnight. I have said for years the market has no feel for poetry, and there, at last, is the proof.
“They poured two billion dollars into one election, four hundred fifty million of it from a single guy, and the public still said no. That's the whole con laid bare — money doesn't vote, people do, and when a bet that size goes bust the only ones who don't eat the loss are the ones who already own everything else. Watch what the new Congress does the first time his name comes up in a subpoena.”
“Look, campaign spending is protected speech, it's not like he bought anything — wait, did I say bought? I mean he invested in candidates he believed in, and investments carry risk, that's just how markets work. And the stock thing, that's completely unrelated, equities dip all the time for reasons that have nothing to do with — did I say nothing to do with politics? That doesn't sound like me.”
Earlier in this story
- Trump admits the Iran war cost Republicans the election, vows he'd fight it again. By Ruth · the evening edition, 5 November 2026
- Musk's nearly $500 million for Republicans buys a Texas loss and a Tesla selloff. By The Lodgers · the afternoon edition, 4 November 2026
- Record $442 million in campaign cash fails to save Texas Republicans; Montana bans it the same day. By Ruth · the morning edition, 4 November 2026
- Musk spends record sum on Republicans, jokes about the defeat it bought. By The Lodgers · the morning edition, 4 November 2026
- Trump has no regrets about the Iran war that just cost his party both chambers of Congress By Ruth · the morning edition, 4 November 2026
- Republican Party's midterm closing argument becomes pool algae on Election Day. By Ruth · the evening edition, 3 November 2026
The receipts
Guardian analysis shows how tumbling approval ratings may have hurt candidates backed by US president Track live results from all 50 states Send us your questions about the US midterms results and Democrats’ ‘blue wave’ Dozens of Republican candidates directly endorsed by Donald Trump lost their US midterm election races, according to…
The vote was an epic rebuke of Silicon Valley.
· The staggering $446m Elon Musk has spent on the US midterms – visualized from the morgue, 31 Oct 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.