How Elon’s X Bucked a Powerful Cultural Force

What do Harvard, MSNBC, and the Sundance Film Festival have in common?

The drama surrounding Elon Musk’s relationship with President Trump has sparked many questions:

Why did Elon go nuclear so quickly?

If Elon broke up with Trump, does that mean Tesla drivers no longer have to fear vandals?

Will Trump and Elon make up?

But I’d like to explore a different question, one unrelated to the current spat: Is Elon’s X bucking a puzzling and powerful cultural force?

To explain what I mean, let’s first take a step back.

Explain what the following have in common: Harvard, Yale, and academia in general, MSNBC, and the legacy media in general, the Ford Foundation and countless nonprofits, The Sundance Film Festival, Hollywood, and public education.

Maybe you answered that they all represent powerful cultural institutions. Yes indeed, but that’s just the beginning.

Maybe you answered that they’re all politically leftist. Now you’re getting warmer, but there’s much more to the story.

The Political Leanings of X

Now let’s take a look at the ideological makeup of Elon’s X.

Plenty of news outlets insist that it’s a right-wing monoculture. Consider one NBC News headline: “How Elon Musk Turned X into a Pro-Trump Echo Chamber.”

But when Pew Research asked X users about their experience on the platform, a different picture emerged. The biggest chunk of respondents (31%) reports that X doesn’t lean right or left. Focus on Republican users, and the response remains similar — they’re more likely to say it doesn’t lean either way. But when Pew asked Democratic users, researchers received a different response.

What would you guess it was?