Musk has given more than $250 million to Republican-aligned groups in the third quarter

Brooks says a political risk premium could weigh on SpaceX and Tesla shares

At XTB, Kathleen Brooks assessed the political risk attached to Tesla and Elon Musk-led SpaceX. “There is now a political risk premium attached to both Tesla and SpaceX that could weigh on their share prices,” she said.

She also said Democratic control of Congress could slow a potential SpaceX-Tesla merger through extra scrutiny. “While Congress cannot stop a merger between SpaceX and Tesla, they could slow it down via extra scrutiny,” Brooks said. The Journal reported that Brooks said Democratic control of Congress “could derail a potential merger between SpaceX and Tesla.”

Campaign-finance filings reviewed by The Wall Street Journal showed that Elon Musk gave more than $250 million to Republican-aligned groups in the third quarter alone.

The Journal reported that Musk’s political donations were concentrated in Texas, which it described as “the center of his sprawling business empire.”

Texas voters elected James Talarico as their first Democratic senator since 1988 and ousted longtime Republican Gov. Greg Abbott.

The Wall Street Journal’s November 4, 2026 report said shares in Elon Musk-led SpaceX and Tesla fell sharply in U.S. premarket trading after Democratic candidates swept the midterm elections. Its prose put SpaceX down 3.6% and Tesla down 3.5% in premarket trade.

A separate ticker fragment in the same report listed SPCX up 3.62% and TSLA down 1.32%. The fragment was distinct from the prose percentages, which reported declines for SpaceX and Tesla.

The Journal wrote that the Democratic victory “came despite Musk’s flurry of donations, and represents a defeat for the one-time member of the Trump administration.” It described the result as handing “a defeat to Republicans backed by Musk to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.”

The report also said both SpaceX and Tesla were vulnerable to broader weakness in artificial-intelligence stocks. Despite earlier weakness, AI stocks were largely in the green in premarket trade, with Nasdaq futures last up 0.15%.

The report characterized the backdrop as mixed: in its prose snapshot, Tesla and SpaceX were lower, while the broader AI group and Nasdaq futures were higher. A separate ticker snapshot in the same report listed SPCX up 3.62% and TSLA down 1.32%.

Joe Stonor covers European equity markets for Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal from London. He was previously a reporter covering investment at the London publication Citywire. After attending Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, Stonor interned as a disinformation researcher at NewsGuard in New York. Stonor started his career as a researcher for a member of Parliament in the U.K. House of Commons.