Although you are correct, that Musk has done weird stuff for a while and seemed to away with it, it got palpably worse toward the end of last year.It's not like all the controversy happened at the end of the year. If you think this is not the case, I invite you to revisit the early post history in this very thread dating back to April or any of the other active threads in which his political activity has been discussed.
He has been increasingly vocal about his problems with the Democratic Party as well as California and local Bay Area officials since 2020 yet Tesla's sales in CA keep rising and rising even faster than the EV market in CA. He started publicly criticizing Twitter's management on March 24th, announced intent for a takeover bid on April 11th, argued more and more in public, and completed the acquisition in October. He tweeted in May "In the past I voted Democrat, because they were (mostly) the kindness party. But they have become the party of division & hate, so I can no longer support them and will vote Republican. Now, watch their dirty tricks campaign against me unfold." Elon announced in June that he was leaning towards supporting Republican governor Desantis of Florida for President in 2024.
2022 data is therefore definitely relevant evidence for evaluating the effect of these controversies and shift to supporting Republicans.
Similar sales numbers observed here in the Seattle metro area, by the way. Approximately as blue as LA & SF metro areas.
Ok then, let me extend the same predictions to also apply to year over year comparisons for 2024, 2025, and 2026. Reminders are now set to recur every January.
Until then I'm gonna go back to not reading this thread again. See you all in nine months.
Not that the content history of this thread and it's length is any sort of measure, but when I looked back, the first quarter of it, the part not from the end of last year and forward, the discussion was whether or not the purchase would happen and whether it was wise. The bulk of antics, and the bulk (3/4) of the thread, was after that.
Again, I wouldn't use that as evidence of anything in the wide world, because we here don't represent that.
And as I said, mainly, I don't think your graphs reflect the sales period some are concerned about.
Most of the bad attention happened late last year, after he actually bought Twitter and started changing the management and content and posting the weird stuff in earnest. As for the rest, we'll see. It would hard to accurately measure sales that didn't occur and the cause. How would you measure that? All you know is if there is period over period growth, or not. There will always be interest rates and loss of tax incentives and supply chain issues to blame if Tesla underperforms. How would you tease out the Elon Effect? Some will point their fingers, others won't. On and on.